IHT Ends 2007 On High Climate-Related Notes

In the Dec 28, 2007 edition, Prof. Daniel B. Botkin makes a point I have been stating for at least three years about idiotic, over-the-top forecasts of climate doom: “Thirty years from now, we will probably not be interested in today’s specific computer forecasts, but we may have lost our faith in science, a deeper and, to me, a more important problem”.

In the same paper, Letters section, reader Richard Nimo deals shortly and effectively with the IHT’s own article on a tropical illness purportedly spreading over the world due to climate change: “Regarding the article “A tropical epidemic – in northern Italy” (Dec. 22): The tiger mosquito has spread to Europe and the United States – but not because of global warming. This mosquito can live in either warm or cold climates. It has spread because it can be transported easily and can breed in very small containers of stagnant water such as trash, tree holes or old tires.

There needs to be more funding and international cooperation to develop vaccines for mosquito-borne diseases like dengue and Chikungunya. Dengue infects hundreds of thousands of people annually, and it kills tens of thousands. – Richard Nimo, Bangkok“.

There is of course a huge number of acritical, often baseless reports on global warming on the IHT too, but it is good to see there is still space for pieces like the two above.

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HadCRUT Data Reveal the World is (Mostly) Cooling

Contrarily to what hastily announced at Bali and acritically repeated in news reports including on the BBC web site, the published HadCRUT data strongly support the notion that warming has stopped, globally.

The month of November 2007 has been:

In terms of global sea-surface temperatures, the 2nd coldest November since 1994, and the coldest month since January 1997.

In terms of southern hemispheric sea-surface temperatures, the 2nd coldest November since 1988, and the coldest month since January 1997.

Regarding northern hemispheric sea-surface temperatures, the 2nd coldest November since 1996, and the 2nd coldest month since March 2001.

In terms of global land temperatures, the 2nd coldest November since 2000, and the coldest month since January 2001.

In terms of southern hemispheric land temperatures, the 2nd coldest November since 1989, and the 2nd coldest month since January 1993.

Regarding northern hemispheric land temperatures, the 2nd coldest November since 2000. and the 11th coldest month since January 2001.

Records broken and almost-broken in most sets, but on the cooling side…is that perhaps why there has been no indication of the above in news releases?

An Exact Model Would Still Be Just a Model

Proponents of Anthropogenic Global Warming often defend their case by stating that models can match observations only “when anthropogenic forcing is included“.

That is a very fallacious argument.

A model, any model is a representation of the world, and as such its internal behaviour demonstrate nothing about its validity as a faithful representation of the world.

Astronomy was able to function for 1400 years between Ptolemy and Copernicus depicting planetary movements with epicycles and deferents. That model works pretty well (have a go at this website), still would anybody use that to argue that the Earth is at the center of the Universe?

Global Warming May Be Just European

(originally published as “Global Warming May Be Just European” on Dec 11, 2007)

Readers of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report – Working Group 2 (AR4-WG2) may be forgiven to think a colossal misreading of available data may be at the foundation of contemporary Climate Change/Global Warming scares.

That report contains a map of “significant changes” (SC) already observed around the world. It is repeated throughout, and you can see it in the Summary for Policymakers, page 10, Figure SPM.1.

A total of 29,459 SCs are reported. An impressive number, at first glance.

Only, 96% of those changes regard just Europe.

The IPCC itself could not list more than 1,225 SCs not related to Europe.

——–

This enormous geographical bias does not get better when we count how many of those SCs are actually “consistent with a warming world”.

Planet-wise, there are 26,285. Of those, 96% are in Europe. Actually, 25,022 are European SCs related to “biological systems”.

That’s 95% of the total.

That means that outside of Europe, the IPCC could not find more than 1,150 SCs “consistent with warming”.

Compare that to the number of European SCs NOT-“consistent with warming”: 3,100

We have twice as many changes that are INCONSISTENT with warming in Europe, than CONSISTENT with warming in the rest of the world.

——–

Note also the distribution of the other “observed changes”. Only 7 for the whole of Africa, 114 for Asia, and 144 for the Polar Regions.

But what is most notable is that in the whole of North America (where, one would expect, a lot of researchers reside), only 810 SCs have been reported. Of those, 752 are consistent with warming.

That’s 3% of the total.

So for a summary: 96% from Europe. 3% with North America. Almost nothing for everywhere else.

How global can that be?

Spiked Online’s Christmas All-Out Attack on AGW

(a) “Al Gore: enviro-tyrant” by Brendan O’Neill (Dec 18)
After Bali: In aspiring to ‘control the destiny of all generations to come’, Gore has unwittingly unveiled his anti-democratic streak

As he flies around the world to tell people that they should fly less, or organises rock-star extravaganzas to tell the masses they should live more meekly, some sceptics have asked: ‘Who the hell does Al Gore think he is?

(b) “Eco-imperialism at the Bali summit?” by James Heartfield (Dec 18) 
After Bali: Are Western powers offsetting their industrial growth by blackmailing poorer countries to foreswear development? One writer thinks so

More than most scientific questions, the state of the environment has been deeply mixed up with international rivalries. In fact, some nations seem to have politicised environmental claims as a weapon in their economic competition. CO2 emissions mirror industrial output. The agreement in Bali to limit CO2 emissions looks to me like an attempt by the Great Powers to regulate industrial competition.

(c) “Hairshirt posturing vs everyday reality” by Robert Lyons (Dec 18)
After Bali: It ended in stalemate because while everyone poses as an opponent of CO2-emitting technologies, the fact is humanity needs them.

‘It was exactly what we wanted, we are indeed very pleased. We will have now two tremendously demanding years, starting right in January.’ So said the European Union’s chief negotiator Humberto Rosa following the outline agreement forged at the UN climate change talks in Bali last weekend. But it seems quite clear that, on the substantive issues under negotiation, everyone simply agreed to disagree.

(d) “Return of the Skeptical Environmentalist” by Tony Gilland (Review, Dec 2007)
In his new book Cool It, Bjørn Lomborg shows how ‘the science’ on global warming – covering everything from polar bear extinction to the disappearance of Greenland – has been distorted and politicised

(e) “Who’s afraid of…Greenland melting?” by Rob Lyons (Dec 13) 
Rob Lyons says we should keep cool about the ongoing scare story of Greenland’s melting ice.

Cooling Event? Meteorologist Joe Bastardi’s Latest Forecast

Joe Bastardi, one of AccuWeather.com’s most expert senior meteorologists, has written a very opinionated piece about the possibility that a very strong, almost unseasonable La Nina (i.e. cooling) event will be “a kick in the teeth of people pushing man-made global warming. Why? Because this is exactly what should be happening in the natural cycle that develops when the AMO is in its warm state“.

We will see if that will happen. It is just a matter of waiting for March/April 2008.

In any case, Mr Bastardi’s courage to put himself right in the middle of potential unfriendly fire is commendable.

Pity the meteorologist. If he’s wrong, he/she’ll be without a job soon. And Accuweather out of business. And this goes on and on for the whole of his or her career.

It’s the complete opposite of the cushioned world of climatologists that can forecast everything and nothing, ready for just-so stories to justify whatever is going to happen.

Atmospheric CO2 and Human Emissions

A look at some of the numbers behind human activities and CO2 reveals that World Primary Energy Production has a .98948 correlation with yearly Mauna Loa atmospheric CO2 content averages.

In the period 1980-2005 though, the former has increased 60% while the latter only 12%.

If we limit ourselves to Petroleum, Gas and Coal, the correlation goes down slightly (to .98201). PGC Energy Production has increased 53% between 1980 and 2005.

Assuming the Mauna Loa data truly reflect an increasing CO2 trend, there are strong indications that atmospheric CO2 go up indeed with human energy production, but the planet is more than capable to cushion any effect.

Probably, there is not enough oil in the ground to cause any doubling of CO2, and even if we burned all the coal we’d be hard pressed to increase our CO2-generation energy production to a value 320% higher than 1980’s, that would cause an expected net effect of seeing a 50% increase in atmospheric CO2 compared to 1980, to around 500ppmv.

DATA SOURCES AND FIGURES

CO2 (1980-2005) (Jan-Dec average) :
338.6825, 339.9266667, 341.1266667, 342.775, 344.42, 345.8983333, 347.1483333, 348.9266667, 351.4816667, 352.9025, 354.1816667, 355.5875, 356.37, 357.0333333, 358.8791667, 360.8725, 362.6375, 363.7591667, 366.6225, 368.3058333, 369.4716667, 371.0116667, 373.0925, 375.6366667, 377.3808333, 379.66

Primary energy production:
287.594, 282.653, 281.182, 283.819, 299.787, 307.259, 316.977, 324.427, 337.041, 343.975, 349.833, 347.044, 347.575, 349.360, 355.578, 363.933, 373.240, 381.485, 385.035, 385.994, 396.263, 403.192, 406.941, 422.692, 444.452, 460.139

Petroleum/Gas/Coal Primary Energy Production:
259.179, 252.764, 249.670, 249.820, 262.870, 267.712, 276.010, 282.035, 292.315, 298.313, 303.140, 298.944, 299.229, 299.031, 304.451, 310.613, 318.467, 326.550, 329.688, 329.184, 338.182, 345.235, 348.298, 363.533, 382.939, 396.854

In the European Union, Living Is Now Officially A Sin

Introducing mobGAS©, “a free software program that you can download to your mobile phone to help measure your personal energy efficiency“. Estimated emissions can then be stored on the web and checked online, either for 7 days or permanently.

mobGAS© has been “developed by the KAM group at the JRC from European Commission, Italy and implemented by MobiComp©, Portugal“.

In an interview for the IHT, developer Tiago Pedrosa said “The important thing is that people learn that with small changes, they can have a real impact on their emissions“.

Translation: “Big Brother the European Commission is watching over you and your emissions!“

Why They Hate Lomborg

Weeks ago I started wondering why AGW campaigners would be so virulent about Lomborg

I think I know now. Read “John Vinocur: Rhetorical excess undercuts the case against global warming.”

One can tolerate a skeptic, but how can one bear the sight of a non-catastrophist warmer?

Younger Dryas

This is something absurdly overlooked.. .a cooling of 10C in a decade? and then a warming of 7C in less than 50 years?

http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ Younger_Dryas

Why hasn’t Gore been laughed off by this??

Or perhaps von Daeniken was right, and aliens were driving SUVs in 9530BC