The Great Global Warming Thread (merged)

[AMDScooter]

Heretic!



http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/ja...imate-sceptic/

^^^ # of seconds until the "he's a big oil shill" claims start 3... 2... 1...

[Enmore]

Anyone heard of an activity called "coyoteing" - named after the character Don Quixote, who famously tilted at windmills?

Seems that it's a Californian pastime involving firing an arrow tied to a fishing line over the blades of a wind turbine. The line gets entangled and pulls up a rope, which in turn pulls up a steel cable. The rest can only be imagined.

Not quite as dramatic as my old Flakpanzer Gepard idea (see below), but certainly ingenious and more affordable.

[SteveW]

^ looks like lotsa fun to me!

[tucker]

Nothing can match the smell of burned cordite early in the morning…

[AMDScooter]

Must be because cooling is a side effect of global warming...

No Warming For 17 Years – Game, Set, Match

[AMDScooter]

Wow. The cult promoters took a thumpin' down under...

Eco-rout down under: ‘A mini-van will have more seats than the Labour party in the new parliament.’

Australians come to their senses – March 24th will be remembered as the day they collectively said “we’re tired of this sh**” Commenter “truthseeker” writes in comments:

============================================================

Anthony,

You may want to refer to Jo Nova’s latest post about the results of a state election down under.

Now for all of you nice people from the USA who may not think state elections are that big a deal if you do not live in that state, please remember that we only have 6 states and 2 territories, not 50 like you guys. We just had an election in Queensland, one of our most economically important states, especially for mineral wealth representing about a quarter of the population. Before the election the Labour (think Democrat) held a small majority in the 89 seat Lower House (House of Representatives).

With over 70% of the vote counted, the results are;


Liberal / National Party coalition (think Republicans – sort of) – 78 seats
Labour (think Democrat) – 7 seats
KAP (new party – think TEA party with less logic and more strangeness) – 2 seats
Independents – 2 seats.

A mini-van will have more seats than the previously incumbent Labour party in the new parliament.

I have one word for this … OUCH!

Those devastating Queensland Election Results: Voters hate lies and the Carbon Tax

UPDATE: Is this a record? Has there ever been a loss this bad in Australian history? Conservatives likely to win 74 seats of an 89 seat parliament.

Labor was reduced to only 11 seats in 1974, and on latest counting tonight appeared set to retain only nine seats. Some analysts put the figure even lower, at seven. This would mean Labor falling short of official party status and relying on the incoming LNP government to grant it party offices, staff and resources. The Queensland Greens failed to win a seat and suffered a fall in support. [The Australian]

This is thread for all those who want to comment on this election. According to Bolt, things are not just bad, they’re seriously awful for the Labor Party. Newspoll says LNP (conservatives) 55%, Labor 26%. Channel Nines polls says Labor could be left with less than 10 seats!

The ABC’s election predictor at 8:26 has LNP on 67 seats, Labor on four, others five, doubtful 15. Absolutely catastrophic for Labor. The current leader of the Labor Party in Queensland is Anna Bligh facing a 13% swing against her, and will need preferences just to stay in Parliament.

March 24, 2012, will be remembered as the day the electorate delivered a decisive, devastating blow to an incumbent Labor government. Courier Mail

For non-Australians, Australia has seven states (technically 5 states and 2 territories), and in 2007 all the States and the Federal Government were Labor. Currently Liberal (meaning conservative) governments have won NSW, WA, and Vic and now look like taking a landslide in Queensland. These are the four largest states.

Good on you mates!!

[Enmore]

They deserve to be obliterated. They're only clinging on to power by a couple of independent MPs as it is.

Interesting that they spell 'Labor' the American way, rather than the usual Australian/British 'Labour'. Seems it was founded by an American/Canadian.

[AMDScooter]

They deserve to be obliterated. They're only clinging on to power by a couple of independent MPs as it is.

Interesting that they spell 'Labor' the American way, rather than the usual Australian/British 'Labour'. Seems it was founded by an American/Canadian.

Sorry about that.. libtardation it appears is contagious and spreading. Make you feel any better if I sad we caught it from Greece?

Not to worry.. in light of the fact those darn actual observations are proving the cult's precious "climate models" to be the junk we've known they are from go. It appears there is a "new" plan in the works for a concerted effort to whitewash those minor details from the pooblic conscience.

From the Skeptical Science "leak": Interesting stuff about generating and marketing "The Consensus Project"

From the Skeptical Science "leak": Interesting stuff about generating and marketing "The Consensus Project"
Comment from the leaker

I have collated some of the data in a more readable form.
http://files.molongo.ru/en/my/sks.zip [Note from Tom-I was able to get an unzippable file from this location earlier today; when I tried retrieving the file again this afternoon, I was unable to unzip the file.]
Why has SkS chosen to publish all this on the public internet? Is it the first step towards transparency, or a catastrophic error?

Skeptical Science Forum - Introduction to The Consensus Project

TCP is basically an update and expansion of Naomi Oreskes' survey of the peer-reviewed literature with deeper analysis. In 2004, Naomi surveyed 928 articles in the Web of Science matching the search "global climate change" from 1993 to 2003. We've expanded the time period (1991 to 2011) and added papers matching the search "global warming". We ended up with 12,272 papers. I imported the details of each paper (including abstracts) into the SkS database and set up a simple crowd sourcing system allowing us to rate the category of each paper using Naomi's initial categories (impacts, mitigation, paleoclimate, methods, rejection, opinion). We did find some rejection papers in the larger sample but the amount was negligible. The amount of citations the rejection papers received were even smaller proportionally, indicating the negligible impact of AGW denial in the peer-reviewed literature. Jim and I wrote these initial results up into a short Brevia article that we just submitted to Science (so please don't mention these results outside of this forum yet, lest it spook Science who freak out if there's any mention of a submitted paper before publication). Of course, Science have a 92% rejection rate so the chances are very slim - we'll try other journals if rejected there.

When the paper is published, we would announce it on SkS as the beginning of the public launch of TCP. It will also be promoted through the communications dept at the Global Change Institute although their press releases only go to Australian media so will have to explore other promotion ideas.

Skeptical Science Forum- The Consensus Project Marketing Ideas

To achieve this goal, we mustn't fall into the trap of spending too much time on analysis and too little time on promotion. As we do the analysis, would be good to have the marketing plan percolating along as well. So a few ideas floating around:

Press releases: Talked to Ove about this yesterday, the Global Change Institute have a communications dept (well, two people) and will issue press releases to Australian media when this comes out. No plan yet for US media.

Mainstream Media: This is the key if we want to achieve public consciousness. MSM is an opaque wall to me so ideas welcome. I suspect this will involve developing time lines, building momentum for the idea and consulting with PR professionals like Jim Hoggan.

Climate Communicators: There needs to be a concerted effort (spearheaded by me) to get climate communicators using these results in their messaging. I've been hooking up with a lot of climate communicators over the last month and will be hooking up with more over the next few months so will be discussing these results with every climate communicator I can get hold of, including heavyweights like Susan Hassol and Richard Somerville, to discuss ways of amplifying this message.
Also Ed Maibach is doing research on the most effective way to debunk the "no consensus" myth so I hope to contact him and hopefully include our results in his research. The more we can get climate communicators incorporating our results into their messages, the better.
Blogosphere: The usual blogosphere networking. Note - Tim Lambert tried to do a similar crowd sourcing effort a few years ago but didn't succeed in generating enough support for the crowd sourcing - I'm confident we can get it done.
Climate Orgs: Also have been making connections with various climate organisations and occasionally talked about the possibility of collaboration so will use this project as a focal point as ways to work together. Have to think about this some more
Google: Coincidentally, started talking to someone who works at Google, specifically the data visualisation department. So I've been working with them on visualising the consensus data in sexy, interactive ways. This will be one of the X-factor elements of TCP - maybe they can even provide an embeddable version of the visualisation which blogs and websites can use.
Video: Peter Sinclair is keen to produce a YouTube video about the TCP results to publish on the Yale Forum on Climate Change.
Booklet similar to Guide and Debunking Handbook, explaining the results of the peer-reviewed paper in plain English with big shiny graphics (with translations, I suppose - they're a pain for me to convert but worthwhile doing).
Kindle/iBook version of Booklet (can you publish free books on Amazon?).
Embeddable widget: graphic showing the graph of strengthening consensus, updated each year, easily copy and pasteable into other blogs. I like this idea, can make TCP go viral and become ubiquitious on the climate blogosphere!

Skeptical Science Forum - The Consensus Project Required Reading

When the "science" behind mmgw fails.. change the messaging.

[Dutchcedar]

Oops... The Medieval Warm Period was a global phenomenon... without help from human CO2 emissions.

Dang, another basis for man-made global warming down the shitter.

[AMDScooter]

^^^^ Not to worry... cult leader Hansen and Co. are hard at work "bending the curve" so to speak.. making the observed data match their cults beliefs.

Hansen Cooling Bolivia’s Past By 5C Per Century

Reader OldOne sent this over. In GISS v3, Hansen has converted a sharp cooling trend in Bolivia into a sharp warming trend. He did this by cooling 1920-1950 3.5C, and cooling 1950-1970 1C.

Impressive and gutsy data tampering by the world’s top rated climate scientist!

If the present refuses to get warmer, the past must become cooler.

How anyone takes these charlatans serious can only be explained by heavy doses of hopium.

[AMDScooter]

What a novel idea.. using the scientific method instead of simply "adjusting" the observed data to fit your preconceived notions of what should be occurring.

Global Warming Models Are Wrong Again
The observed response of the climate to more CO2 is not in good agreement with predictions.

During a fundraiser in Atlanta earlier this month, President Obama is reported to have said: "It gets you a little nervous about what is happening to global temperatures. When it is 75 degrees in Chicago in the beginning of March, you start thinking. On the other hand, I really have enjoyed nice weather."

What is happening to global temperatures in reality? The answer is: almost nothing for more than 10 years. Monthly values of the global temperature anomaly of the lower atmosphere, compiled at the University of Alabama from NASA satellite data, can be found at the website http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/. The latest (February 2012) monthly global temperature anomaly for the lower atmosphere was minus 0.12 degrees Celsius, slightly less than the average since the satellite record of temperatures began in 1979.

The lack of any statistically significant warming for over a decade has made it more difficult for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its supporters to demonize the atmospheric gas CO2 which is released when fossil fuels are burned. The burning of fossil fuels has been one reason for an increase of CO2 levels in the atmosphere to around 395 ppm (or parts per million), up from preindustrial levels of about 280 ppm.


Getty Images
CO2 is not a pollutant. Life on earth flourished for hundreds of millions of years at much higher CO2 levels than we see today. Increasing CO2 levels will be a net benefit because cultivated plants grow better and are more resistant to drought at higher CO2 levels, and because warming and other supposedly harmful effects of CO2 have been greatly exaggerated. Nations with affordable energy from fossil fuels are more prosperous and healthy than those without.

The direct warming due to doubling CO2 levels in the atmosphere can be calculated to cause a warming of about one degree Celsius. The IPCC computer models predict a much larger warming, three degrees Celsius or even more, because they assume changes in water vapor or clouds that supposedly amplify the direct warming from CO2. Many lines of observational evidence suggest that this "positive feedback" also has been greatly exaggerated.

There has indeed been some warming, perhaps about 0.8 degrees Celsius, since the end of the so-called Little Ice Age in the early 1800s. Some of that warming has probably come from increased amounts of CO2, but the timing of the warming—much of it before CO2 levels had increased appreciably—suggests that a substantial fraction of the warming is from natural causes that have nothing to do with mankind.

Frustrated by the lack of computer-predicted warming over the past decade, some IPCC supporters have been claiming that "extreme weather" has become more common because of more CO2. But there is no hard evidence this is true. After an unusually cold winter in 2011 (December 2010-February 2011) the winter of 2012 was unusually warm in the continental United States. But the winter of 2012 was bitter in Europe, Asia and Alaska.

Weather conditions similar to 2012 occurred in the winter of 1942, when the U.S. Midwest was unusually warm, and when the Wehrmacht encountered the formidable forces of "General Frost" in a Russian winter not unlike the one Russians just had.

Large fluctuations from warm to cold winters have been the rule for the U.S., as one can see from records kept by the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA. For example, the winters of 1932 and 1934 were as warm as or warmer than the 2011-2012 one and the winter of 1936 was much colder.

Nightly television pictures of the tragic destruction from tornadoes over the past months might make one wonder if the frequency of tornadoes is increasing, perhaps due to the increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. But as one can read at Andrew Revkin's New York Times blog, dotearth, "There is no evidence of any trend in the number of potent tornadoes (category F2 and up) over the past 50 years in the United States, even as global temperatures have risen markedly."

Like winter temperatures, the numbers, severity and geographical locations of tornadoes fluctuate from year-to-year in ways that are correlated with the complicated fluid flow patterns of the oceans and atmosphere, the location of the jet stream, El Niño or La Niña conditions of the tropical Pacific Oceans, etc.

Related Video


Princeton physicist William Happer argues that computer models vastly exaggerate the effects of carbon dioxide on climate and that CO2 may in fact be beneficial.

As long as the laws of nature exist, we will have tornadoes. But we can save many more lives by addressing the threat of tornadoes directly—for example, with improved and more widely dispersed weather radars, and with better means for warning the people of endangered areas—than by credulous support of schemes to reduce "carbon footprints," or by funding even more computer centers to predict global warming.

It is easy to be confused about climate, because we are constantly being warned about the horrible things that will happen or are already happening as a result of mankind's use of fossil fuels. But these ominous predictions are based on computer models. It is important to distinguish between what the climate is actually doing and what computer models predict. The observed response of the climate to more CO2 is not in good agreement with model predictions.

We need high-quality climate science because of the importance of climate to mankind. But we should also remember the description of how science works by the late, great physicist, Richard Feynman:

"In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience; compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong."

The most important component of climate science is careful, long-term observations of climate-related phenomena, from space, from land, and in the oceans. If observations do not support code predictions—like more extreme weather, or rapidly rising global temperatures—Feynman has told us what conclusions to draw about the theory.

Mr. Happer is a professor of physics at Princeton.

A version of this article appeared Mar. 27, 2012, on page A13 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Global Warming Models Are Wrong Again.

[Enmore]

This year's UN global warming junket will be in the gulf state of Quatar in November.

After the hilarious frozen farce in Copenhagen, they've obviously decided to go exclusively for hot countries - Mexico, South Africa and now Quatar.

[AMDScooter]

Australia's Green Agenda Unravelling

QUEENSLAND Premier Campbell Newman has ordered Anna Bligh's husband to begin dismantling green energy programs he helped create, as the new LNP government moved to slash environmental spending to offset the federal carbon tax. The showpiece of the Gillard government's $1.5 billion Solar Flagships Program is now in jeopardy, after Mr Newman yesterday pulled the plug on $75 million in state funding pledged for the $1.2bn Solar Dawn solar thermal project near Chinchilla, west of Brisbane.

Resources Minister Martin Ferguson yesterday suggested the federal government might withdraw its own $464m contribution, promised only last month. "If the new Queensland government chose to breach the existing financial commitment to the Solar Dawn project, the Australian government would naturally need to consider its own position," Mr Ferguson said.

Mr Newman yesterday declared his LNP government would axe seven other green schemes, on the grounds the carbon tax would make them redundant. "We now have a federal government that is imposing a great big carbon tax on us and the rest of the country that is meant to solve all these (environmental) problems," he said.

Mr Newman has given the job of dismantling the programs to the bureaucrat who set them up - Greg Withers, who is married to Ms Bligh.

"We want him to unravel those programs 'cause he's the bloke who set them up," Mr Newman said. "There are rumours going around that he's packed up his office. I want to say very clearly that is news to me; he is, as far as I'm concerned, an employee of the Queensland government, and we would like him to do a few things for us at the moment."

Mr Newman, a long-time lord mayor of Brisbane, was forced to fend off accusations of "jobs for the mates" after he spent his second day at the helm removing six departmental heads and replacing them with City Hall contacts and LNP allies. They include Michael Caltabiano, a former state Liberal MP and party president, who was yesterday made director-general of the Department of Main Roads and Transport, and Brisbane City Council infrastructure manager Barry Broe, appointed State Co-ordinator-General with a mandate to fast-track infrastructure.

Mr Newman praised his appointees as "highly professional individuals that are well-qualified to do the job".

"I accept that criticism could be there and I'm saying to all Queenslanders these are people who'll do a fantastic job," he said.

"(The Labor government) appointed people who didn't have a clue what they were doing."

Mr Newman denied his government was trying to manage out Mr Withers, an assistant director-general who set up the Office of Climate Change when his wife became premier in 2007.

Mr Withers stands to receive a six-figure payout if he is dumped, as he renewed a three-year contract, with a further two-year option, on his $220,000-a-year package in December. "Nobody has taken any action against Mr Withers," Mr Newman said.

"The rumours of us making some sort of move against him are untrue and unfounded. Since he's the head of these various carbon reduction programs that we pointed out are now irrelevant . . . His brief at the moment will be to actually unravel those quietly.

"He has got a job if he wants one."

Mr Withers did not respond to The Australian yesterday.

Mr Newman announced the closure of the $430m Queensland Climate Change Fund, which provides $30m a year for climate change initiatives, and the $50m Renewable Energy Fund, which supports the Geothermal Centre of Excellence.

Dismantle the cult's insanity with a wrecking ball.. I love it!

[AMDScooter]

Desperation is never pretty... but holy sh*t this cult leader just went off the deep end.

Nasa scientist: climate change is a moral issue on a par with slavery
Prof Jim Hansen to use lecture at Edinburgh International Science Festival to call for worldwide tax on all carbon emissions

[jimzinsocal]

^^Well yeah...when climate science (which nobody argues) crosses over to what we might call climate religion? We can expect morality spankings.
The arrogance demanded by climate religion is simply amazing.
But not to worry. Climate religion supplies us rosary beads. Say 5 cap and trades and write a check.