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  1. #1
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    Data Suggests Climate Entering 30 Year Cooling Period, Perhaps Longer

    20 November 2012


    Data Suggests Climate Entering 30 Year Cooling Period, Perhaps Longer

    Ongoing sea temperature readings suggest that global heat content has stabilised over the past 15 years -- despite an 8.5% rise in atmospheric CO2 levels. Ongoing observations are diverging significantly from James Hansen's IPCC model projections, as seen below. Some observers of climate data are expecting the Earth to pass through at least a 30 year climate cooling period.

    The apparent "decoupling" of global heat from atmospheric CO2 concentrations -- with the clear divergence of observed temperatures from projected temperatures -- provides mounting evidence for falsification of IPCC climate models.

    Here is an excerpt from an article by Dr. Norman Page, which uses empirical data to contradict IPCC climate model-based projections (via WUWT):

    1. Check the Temperature Trends and Data.
    Because of the Urban Heat Island effect ,the built in local variability of the NH land data and the thermal inertia of the oceans, Sea Surface Temperatures are the best measure of global temperature trends. These show that the global warming trend ended in about 2003. THERE HAS NOW BEEN NO NET WARMING SINCE 1997 -15 YEARS WITH CO2 RISING 8.5% WITH NO GLOBAL TEMPERATURE INCREASE. SINCE 2003 THE TREND IS NEGATIVE.
    To check the past years go to
    ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ano...1-2000mean.dat
    and for monthly updates go to.
    ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/monthly.ocean.90S.90N.df_1901-2000mean.dat

    The 2012 average NCDC SST anomaly thru Sept was .4438 versus the 1997 annual anomaly of .4575.
    The peak anomaly was .5207 in 2003.

    An excellent site for reviewing all the basic temperature data is climate4you welcome

    2. Check the current phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

    Here is a plot and suggested projection based on the Hadley SST3 from Tallbloke.
    Fig 2

    (See: The Carbon Flame War: Final Comment « Tallbloke's Talkshop) He says “I have put together a simple model which replicates sea surface temperature (which drives global lower troposphere temperature and surface temperatures a few months later). The correlation between my model and the SST is R^2=0.874 from 1876 FOR MONTHLY DATA.” The model is shown with predictions to 2050 (blue) along with the HADsst3 (red).
    I included Fig 2 because an approximate 60 year cycle is obvious by inspection and this coincides well with the 30 year +/- positive (warm) and 30year +/ negative (cold) phases of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Figure 2 shows warming from about 1910 - 1940-45 , cooling from then to about 1975 -.warming to about 2003-5 and cooling since then. Total warming during the 20th century was about 0.8 degrees C. For a complete discussion and review of the data relating the PDO to the other oceanic cycles and temperatures see
    http://myweb.wwu.edu/dbunny/pdfs/ale...cillations.pdf

    For latest PDO data see http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/PDO.latest
    IT IS CLEAR THAT WE ARE IN THE EARLY STAGES OF A THIRTY YEAR NEGATIVE (COOLING ) PDO CYCLE.
    Fig3 ( from climate4you welcome)

    3. Check Solar Activity – where are we at?
    The major ice age climate cycles are controlled by the sun – earth orbital eccentricity,and the earth’s obliquity and precession. These cycles are approximately 100,000, 41,000 and 21000 years in length respectively and are well documented in the ice core and geological record. It is useful to keep in mind that the warmest temperatures in the current interglacial occurred about 7500+/- years ago and the GENERAL TREND IS NOW A COOLING TOWARDS THE NEXT ICE AGE.
    Fig 4 http://colli239.fts.educ.msu.edu/199...1/vostok-1999/

    These long term cycles are modulated by quasi cyclic trends in solar activity which may be decadal ,centennial or millennial in length.Of particular interest in deciding where we are with regard to the solar cycles is the approximately 1000 +/- year cycle which produced succesively the Roman Warm Period, the Dark Ages,the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age and the recent 20th century warming.
    Fig 5 (From Climate was HOTTER in Roman, medieval times than now: Study • The Register )

    The red line shows the continuing cooling trend from the Holocene optimum and the 1000yr +/- solar cycle is clearly seen.
    NOTE – A REASONABLE CASE CAN BE MADE THAT THE WARMING PEAKS OF A 60 YEAR PDO CYCLE AND THE 1000 YEAR SOLAR CYCLE COINCIDED AT 2000 +/- AND WE ARE LIKELY ON THE COOLING SLOPE OF BOTH.
    The clearest empirical measure of solar activity is the solar magnetic field strength. On an empirical basis Livingston and Penn have shown that the decline in solar magnetic field strength suggests that sunspots could disappear by about 2015 signalling THE START OF A NEW MAUNDER MINIMUM WITH SIGNIFICANT COOLING.
    For a semi-empirical estimate of the possible cooling if a Maunder Minimum does develop see http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2001/...ell_etal_1.pdf




    __WUWT Near Future Cooling

    Of course no one has a perfect lock on predicting the future of climate or anything else. But there is more than sufficient doubt concerning IPCC model projections to block any large scale implementation of massive redistribution of funds -- ultimately in the $trillions of dollars -- based upon IPCC model output. Particularly since the IPCC and its sister UN organisations would be among the main beneficiaries of this extorted largesse.

    In the eyes of faux environmental greens, there is no doubt that humans are bringing doom to the planet -- one way of the other. If they are forced to give up carbon hysteria doom, they will simply reach down into the muck of their own doom-seeking minds and scoop up another imaginary flavour of doom with which to terrify the dumbed down masses.

    Best to keep on your toes with this lot.

    Labels: Climate Grifters, climate models

    Al Fin: Data Suggests Climate Entering 30 Year Cooling Period, Perhaps Longer
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  2. #2
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    Benny Peiser Tells Prince Charles ‘Extreme Alarmism’ Is Falling On Deaf Ears by Jonathan Brown

    Saturday, November 24th 2012, 12:38 PM EST

    Co2sceptic (Site Admin)

    Mankind must go green or die, says Prince Charles – The Prince of Wales has warned that mankind is on the brink of “committing suicide on a grand scale” unless urgent progress is made in tackling green issues such as carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, intensive farming and resource depletion.

    Adopting uncharacteristically apocalyptic language, the Prince said the world was heading towards a “terrifying point of no return” and that future generations faced an “unimaginable future” on a toxic planet.

    In a pre-recorded speech broadcast in acceptance of an lifetime environmental achievement award, the Prince said green views that had once seen him written off as a “crank” were now backed by hard evidence.

    He told the gala ceremony for the 7th International Green Awards at Battersea Power Station in London that fossil fuels and supplies of fresh water were under pressure while the stability of weather patterns was threatened and “vast amounts of CO2” were still pumped into the atmosphere. “Humanity and the Earth will soon begin to suffer some very grim consequences,” he said.

    “It’s therefore an act of suicide on a grand scale to ride so roughshod over those checks and balances and flout nature’s necessary limits as blatantly as we do.

    “The longer we go on ignoring what is already happening and denying what will happen in the future, the more profoundly we condemn our grandchildren and their children to an unbearably toxic and unstable existence. We simply have to turn the tide.”

    The Prince has been criticised throughout his life for getting involved in public affairs, writing to ministers and airing his views on contentious subjects ranging from architecture to alternative medicine.

    His most controversial intervention came in 2010 when a £3bn scheme to redevelop the Chelsea Royal Barracks was dropped after the Prince lobbied the Prime Minister of Qatar over the sustainability of the project describing it as a “gigantic experiment with the very soul of our city”. The Prince said that the lifetime achievement award was an acknowledgement for what he described as his “rather inadequate efforts” to create change.

    “All those years ago when I began to see that this could be so, I found myself labelled with every term that describes a crank,” he said.

    “I don’t actually recommend it as a pastime but, extraordinary as it may seem, nowadays … that intuitive feeling has been backed up by a mass of scientific evidence in every possible field confirming that our predominant approach is having a very adverse effect on nature.”

    However Dr Benny Peiser, director of Lord Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation, said the Prince’s views were still out of step with mainstream thinking.

    “He is really a good representative of the environmental movement as such and it is not a personal issue,” he said. But he added that the “extreme alarm and extreme concern” was “over the top and not helpful to the debate”.

    “It doesn’t convince any governments or any ministers and in the end it is over the top and won’t be heard.”

    H/T TheGWPF.org

    Benny Peiser Tells Prince Charles
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  3. #3
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    Saturday, November 24, 2012

    UK: Whatever Happened To Our Heatwaves?

    http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/11/24/whatever-happened-to-our-heatwaves/

    The record temperature of 34.3C was set in 1990, and 1995 set the record for most days with six. The consecutive summers of 1975 and 1976 probably still stand out as the longest and hottest summers of all, with 1976 topping the averages with 23.1C. And there have been no days over 30C at all since 2006.

    So once again we see that the modelling and the forecasts bear no resemblance to what's actually been happening.

    Tom Nelson: UK: Whatever Happened To Our Heatwaves?
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  4. #4
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    Nov 19, 2012

    Christopher Horner: New carbon tax would be folly
    Such a levy can’t be justified on basis of altering climate; real goal is a revenue stream to fund European-style government.

    By CHRISTOPHER HORNER / For the Register

    Recently, a leaked agenda laid bare a strategy session among a virtual Who’s Who of left-leaning big-government activist groups, hosted by a generally conservative policy group, the American Enterprise Institute. By the agenda’s title, this fifth in a series was part of a “Lame Duck Initiative” to strategize enactment of a “carbon” tax, or federal energy tax on oil, coal and gas, in the post-election session of Congress that began this week.

    AEI thereby joined former Republican politicians and advisers seeking to rebrand, as a conservative idea, the latest incarnation of what the political Left has long pined for, only to be told it was a dead letter given the political debacle of the Clinton administration’s 1993 “BTU tax.”

    The headings and justifications for the new effort were equally as incongruent as conservatives falling for this call to bail out opponents of abundant, affordable reliable energy. These reflected diametrically opposed sales pitches apparently foretelling different audiences what they want to hear.

    Specifically, AEI and the other groups are preparing to sell the carbon tax both as “revenue neutral” and as a “deficit hawk” measure. But this new energy tax can’t actually be both.

    Revenue neutrality means it would be offset by reducing other taxes - this is the sales pitch for conservatives and swing voters. One rumored target is the 18.4 cents-per-gallon federal gasoline tax.

    This strategy would further illuminate the campaign’s confusion, given that the purpose of a carbon tax, as a “sin” tax, is to make activities deemed undesirable (energy use) more expensive.

    Alternately, the new energy tax is supposedly targeted for deficit reduction - which in Washington means directed to new spending.

    However absurd on its face, this is politics, and saying both just might work. The key thing is simply to get the new energy tax enacted, by whatever means necessary.

    This is only the beginning of the muddled sales pitch. The new tax would be sold as a response to man-made climate change. The biggest problem here, outside of the political baggage of myriad climate-science scandals, is that it is universally agreed that such a tax would be a meaningless gesture.

    Specifically, under no scenario, even accepting every assumption proffered by global warming activists, would any strategy ever proposed actually detectably impact climate. This includes the “global” Kyoto Protocol treaty, which within days of being agreed upon in 1997 was footnoted by proponents as actually being just the first of 30 such treaties needed to impact climate.

    So much for a “climate” rationale for a U.S.-only carbon tax, which seeks unilateral, marginal reductions in carbon dioxide. CO2 is a marginal greenhouse gas, all of which gases, together, still amount to a marginal climate “forcing” (major forcings being the sun, oceans, clouds). A fraction of a fraction does not climatic impact bring.

    The temperature after imposition of cap-and-trade, the Kyoto Protocol or a carbon tax will be whatever it would have been without any of them. So, while a new energy tax may be chicken soup for the wealthy world’s environmental guilt, as a substantive matter, it is a futile gesture.

    There are few opportune times for such things, but now certainly is not one of them.

    So let’s have an open, honest debate, which requires first acknowledging that a “carbon” tax is less likely being proposed for things it would not do, like impact climate, than for what it would do.

    A proposed carbon tax is actually about finding a new, massive and ultimately expanding revenue source, an ATM machine, a European-style revenue gusher to fund a European-style government.

    When the carbon tax’s proponents can acknowledge these things, or demonstrate that they are not true, we can have a useful debate over their new energy tax.

    Christopher C. Horner is a Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., and author of “The Liberal War on Transparency: Confessions of a Freedom of Information ‘Criminal’” (Threshold Editions).

    -------------------
    DRIESSEN: Global warming hysteria will kill jobs
    By Paul Diessen, Washington Times

    Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have boosted shale gas production from zero a few years ago to 10 percent of all U.S. energy supplies in 2012, observes energy analyst Daniel Yergin. It has increased U.S. oil production 25 percent since 2008, in the face of more federal land and resource withdrawals, permitting delays and declining public land production.

    In the process, the fracking revolution created 1.7 million jobs in oil fields, equipment manufacturing, legal and information technology services, and other sectors. It will generate over $60 billion this year in state and federal tax and royalty revenues, reduce America’s oil import bill by $75 billion, and save us $100 billion in imported liquefied natural gas, concludes a new IMF Global Insight analysis.

    A resurgent American petroleum industry could add “as many as 3.6 million jobs by 2020, and increase the US gross domestic product by as much as 3 percent,” says Citigroup’s “Energy 2020” report. Fracking could make North America energy independent and turn the United States into the world’s number one oil producer in a few more years.

    For people still concerned about “catastrophic manmade global warming” (despite 16 years of stable global temperatures), hydraulic fracturing helps cut carbon dioxide emissions, using clean-burning natural gas that costs a third less than oil per BTU.

    Common sense says hydraulic fracturing should garner widespread public, political and even environmentalist support. Several states have banned it, however, and the Environmental Protection Agency and Bureau of Land Management are poised to unleash new rules that could usurp state control and restrict or hyper-regulate fracking on federal, state and private lands.

    They justify the bans and regulations by citing public anxiety over fracking but fail to mention that this anxiety has been nurtured and orchestrated by environmental pressure groups whose fractured fairy tales about this technology would be as funny as the Rocky and Bullwinkle tales if the economic, employment, national security and environmental consequences weren’t so serious.

    Some of these “fairy tales” include:

    Burning tap water. You could ignite methane at your kitchen faucet if your water well was drilled through gas-bearing rock formations and not properly sealed to keep gas out. Fracking zones are thousands of feet below groundwater supplies, though. Production wells use cement and steel casing that extends hundreds of feet below the surface, and sensitive instruments monitor downhole activity to ensure that valuable gas does not escape into near-surface formations or the atmosphere.

    Groundwater contamination. Fracking fluids are 99.5 percent water and sand. The other 0.5 percent are chemicals that fight bacterial growth, keep sand particles suspended and improve production. The vast majority of these chemicals can be found in household items that Americans use safely every day including cheese, beer, canned fish, dairy desserts, shampoo and cosmetic products. In addition, heavy plastic liners are now common under drilling rigs, storage tanks and containment pits. Along with modern drilling and well casing methods, these liners help make chemical or salt contamination of groundwater far less likely than from winter salting of icy roads.

    Wastewater and water depletion. In addition to changing the composition of fracking fluids to address concerns about water use and wastewater disposal, drilling companies increasingly recycle the water they use. Today, far less water is used in fracking than to grow corn and process it into ethanol.

    Earthquakes. Fracturing rocks does cause cracking that can be measured with ultra-sensitive equipment. But these micro-seismic events measure around 0.8 on the Richter Scale, about what is caused by a passing car. Even loaded dump trucks register only 3 (the minimum that can be felt by humans), and property damage does not begin until level 5. Deep injection of water for geothermal energy development, enhanced oil recovery operations, or disposal of petroleum, municipal or industrial wastewater have caused detectable seismic activity. Yet of more than 800,000 injection wells nationwide, only about 40 were felt at the surface.

    Fracking is subject to multiple regulations. State and local regulation and cooperation with industry, constant refinements and improvements in rules and practices, and accommodation to public concerns about water, fracking fluids, road congestion, community impacts and other issues have been ongoing for decades. That is part of the reason why 2.5 million instances of fracking worldwide (over 1 million in the U.S.) since 1949 have not caused any serious harm.

    Unfortunately, environmentalist fairy tales about fracking cost us energy, jobs, revenue and prosperity for no ecological benefit. The ultimate irony is Europe, where opposition to fracking (and nuclear power) is causing Germany and other central EU countries to build 10,600 megawatts of new coal-fired electrical power plants during the next four years.

    Meanwhile, green power mandates have pushed Germany’s electricity prices to the second highest in Europe (32 cents per kWh, compared to an average of 10 cents in the U.S.) putting countless jobs at risk and leaving German households staring at another big rate hike next year.

    America needs access to its oil and gas deposits under rational regulations that reflect reality, instead of eco fairy tales. The White House, Congress and government bureaucracies need to distinguish between fact and fiction, understand how to produce real energy, jobs and revenues, and stop trying to “fundamentally transform” our nation.

    Paul Driessen is senior policy adviser for the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow and author of “Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death” (Merril Press, 2012).

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  5. #5
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    Nov 16, 2012

    Opposition to carbon taxes in both parties
    "We would never propose a carbon tax”—White House spokesman

    E&E News reports: “If President Obama left any doubt during his news conference yesterday about whether he would push a new carbon tax to fight climate change, White House spokesman Jay Carney tried today to put the issue to bed. ‘We would never propose a carbon tax and have no intention of proposing one,’ Carney said, according to a White House transcript of a press briefing on board Air Force One. It was an unusually blunt assessment of a policy position the White House had been telegraphing even before Obama’s speech. Carney acknowledged that Obama believes there’s more work to do to fight climate change but said the president’s immediate focus would be economic and job growth. “Task No. 1 is dealing with these [fiscal cliff] deadlines that pose real challenges to our economy,’ Carney said.”

    “House GOP Opposes Carbon Tax”

    Inside EPA reports: “The entire House GOP leadership has signed a free-market group’s pledge to oppose a carbon tax in the 113th Congress, which could further undermine environmentalists and others as they push for the tax, after the White House signaled it has no intent to propose such a measure even in the midst of a fiscal crisis. Pro-carbon tax groups continue to press for the policy as one that could reduce emissions and raise much-needed revenues. For example, the groups Green for All and Rebuild the Dream issued a Nov. 15 statement noting, ‘President Obama indicated that he’s committed to fighting climate change while creating jobs. A carbon tax could achieve both. It would help end the fiscal standoff and save important federal programs without burdening low-income and middle-class families.’ However, Obama at a Nov. 14 press conference said he will likely delay further policy action on climate change until after ‘wide ranging’ talks with experts—a statement that coupled with the House GOP anti-carbon tax pledge suggests dim prospects for the measure.”

    “House GOP leaders pledge to oppose climate change ‘tax’”

    The Hill reports: “The entire House GOP leadership team has registered its opposition to climate legislation that raises revenue, underscoring the long odds that taxing carbon emissions has in negotiations on the fiscal cliff. The Tea Party group Americans for Prosperity greeted Wednesday’s election of the House GOP leadership team by pointing out that the lawmakers are among the signers of the group’s ‘no climate tax’ pledge. Signers agree to ‘oppose any legislation relating to climate change that includes a net increase in government revenue.’ They include Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who all retained their leadership posts.”

    The Green agenda and carbon taxes have decimated Europe. The greens don’t care. Spain’s Unemployment is 25.8%, Greece 25.4%, Macedonia 31.6%. Spain invested heavily in wind and solar subsidies which sent energy prices skyrocketing and industry overseas. They have stopped the subsidies. Because these socialist governments have entitlement societies, forced cutbacks lead to riots. That is our future if our government gives into pressure from environmental terrorists.

    ----------
    Five GOP Bills Obama Should Support
    Convinced that he has a mandate to increase taxes in his second term, President Barack Obama is reportedly planning to “barnstorm” the country in January if House Republicans fail to accept his demands.
    But before Obama bills taxpayers for his transcontinental victory lap, he would be wise to rethink his opposition to five House-passed regulatory reform measures currently languishing in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
    Because increases in regulation decrease profit by shifting resources toward compliance rather than growth, new regulations have the same effect as new taxes. If Obama is looking for a way to build credibility on a tax reform deal with House Republicans, he would be wise to persuade his fellow Democrats to pass these House-backed regulatory reforms.
    1. Regulations from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act
    Since the regulatory spree inaugurated by the New Deal, Congress has been complicit in the enormous increase in federal regulations. Every year these rules further constrict the ability of the private sector to create jobs and grow the economy. The game goes like this. Congress passes a vague law empowering an agency to regulate an entire industry or activity. The agency writes rules and implements them, at huge costs to consumers and producers. Congress is outraged, but does little to stem the tide.
    In 2010 alone, federal agencies implemented 100 “major rules,” meaning each rule is expected to have an economic effect of $100 million or more annually. Congress has very little power to stop such regulations from going into effect, and no incentive to tinker with them once the market absorbs them. The REINS Act corrects this problem by requiring any major rule to be approved by both houses of Congress before it becomes law.
    2. Regulatory Accountability Act
    Where the REINS Act targets the impact of major rules, the Regulatory Accountability Act (RAA) reforms the way rules are made. Currently, agencies under a president’s control are required by executive order to use cost-benefit analysis when evaluating the impact of their proposed regulations. But executive orders can be rescinded by any president at any time. Under RAA, the cost-benefit requirement becomes legally required no matter which president is in office.
    RAA also extends the cost-benefit rule to independent agencies, so called because technically they are not under the direction of a president when making policy decisions. Examples include the National Labor Relations Board and the Federal Communications Commission. Under Obama, both the NLRB (in rulings against right-to-work states) and the FCC (with its misnamed Net Neutrality policy) have proposed sweeping regulatory changes without bothering to consider how much their dictates will cost. It’s time for every agency in the federal bureaucracy to calculate the burden of its regulations.
    3. Red Tape Reduction and Small Business Job Creation Act
    One of the biggest complaints from the private sector is that the barrage of costly new rules spewing out of Washington makes it almost impossible to justify expanding staff levels or capital improvements. Faced with a string of unfunded mandates from laws like Obamacare and others, small businesses are wisely opting to stockpile money and outsource jobs, rather than risk hiring full-time workers who are too expensive to employ.
    If it became law, this bill would prohibit any new economically significant regulation from going into effect unless the unemployment rate falls to 6 percent or below. It would also remind bureaucratic administrators of the link between regulation and the job market.
    4. Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act
    Speaking of the job market…
    This bill easily could be called the Pesticide Industry Relief Act, but the official name is more attractive and just as accurate. In 2006, a federal appeals court threw out the Bush EPA’s decision not to require crop dusters and other pesticide sprayers to obtain a permit under the Clean Water Act (CWA).
    The Bush EPA had three good reasons opposing yet another permit process. First, pesticide regulation is covered under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), not CWA. Second, pesticides already go through a rigorous screening process under FIFRA, so users know the relevant guidelines. Third, the extra compliance costs would be oppressive. By its own count, EPA estimates that the new permit gauntlet will add 1,033,713 hours of work for permit-seekers, as well as 45,809 hours of work for officials to process them.
    Because of all this, it is no wonder the Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act was passed unanimously by Republicans and Democrats out of committee, and with all Republicans and 57 Democrats voting to send it to the Senate. Getting this bill signed into law would mark at least one occasion where Obama took seriously complaints about onerous and duplicative compliance costs.
    5. Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act
    Of the bills mentioned thus far, this may be the least likely to inspire a regulatory reversal by President Obama since he has already threatened a veto if it ever comes to his desk.
    Still, the measure has merit. If passed, the Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act would draw bureaucrats’ attention to the impact of new regulations on small businesses, meaning those entities without recourse to lobbyists, lawyers and other liaisons to soften the blow rules have on the bottom line. RFIA would increase the quantitative data available on how a proposed regulation could harm or benefit small businesses by requiring agency officials to post their findings on the agency’s website.
    When he entered office, Obama promised to preside over “the most transparent administration in history.” Changing his tune on RFIA would be a big step in that direction.
    Signing any of these reforms into law would help build toward the kind of bipartisan consensus Republicans and Democrats will need to make any real progress on a tax reform deal, but the clock is ticking.
    When the new Congress is sworn-in in January the legislative system resets, and all of the bills that failed to get to the president will die.
    In order to get the nation’s economy moving in the right direction, House Republicans and the Obama White House should make the latter’s campaign slogan their own: “We Can’t Wait.”



    Nov 14, 2012
    Meteorologist challenges Obama’s climate change claims
    by LIBERTY CHICK
    President Barack Obama got the facts wrong on global temperatures in his brief discussion of climate change Wednesday afternoon, according to Joe Bastardi, a meteorologist and Chief Forecaster to Weatherbell Analytics.
    In his first press conference since March, Obama addressed one question on climate change from Mark Landler of the New York Times, premised on recent claims from climate change activists that Hurricane Sandy was evidence of global warming.
    Obama’s answer was also a mere regurgitation of the same incorrect claims from climate change activists, says Bastardi, and did not necessarily represent entirely accurate facts. Below is Landler’s question, followed by an excerpt of the president’s answer.
    Q: Thank you, Mr. President. In his endorsement of you a few weeks ago, Mayor Bloomberg said he was motivated by the belief that you would do more to confront the threat of climate change than your opponent. Tomorrow you’re going up to New York City, where you’re going to, I assume, see people who are still suffering the effects of Hurricane Sandy, which many people say is further evidence of how a warming globe is changing our weather. What specifically do you plan to do in a second term to tackle the issue of climate change? And do you think the political will exists in Washington to pass legislation that could include some kind of a tax on carbon?
    PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know, as you know, Mark (sp), we can’t attribute any particular weather event to climate change. What we do know is the temperature around the globe is increasing faster than was predicted even 10 years ago. We do know that the Arctic ice cap is melting faster than was predicted even five years ago. We do know that there have been extraordinarily - there have been an extraordinarily large number of severe weather events here in North America, but also around the globe.
    Earlier Wednesday, Breitbart News published a response from Bastardi to similar claims recently published by the Huffington Post. Upon hearing the president’s statement today on the matter, he provided the following response to Breitbart News.
    First, I would like to point out that it is refreshing to see the President discard some of the hysteria surrounding Hurricane Sandy and its link to global warming. Anthropogenic global warming activists will attribute every extreme weather event to global warming, which has now been termed “climate change” since the earth has stopped warming, which leads us to the next issue with the President’s comments.
    Not only are temperatures not increasing faster than was predicted ten years ago, temperatures have not increased at all since the late 1990’s.

    Click to enlarge.

    Furthermore, when you compare the observed temperatures of the past 10 years against all the climate model predictions, the result should do more than raise eyebrows about how much tax-payer money is being wasted on climate science that is proving to be wrong.

    Click to enlarge.

    Before we make carbon policy that can hurt our already struggling economy, there needs to be an unbiased debate about what is actually driving our climate.
    As stated earlier today at Breitbart News, it will be that much more important that hyperbole and political agenda do not drown out facts and historical reality as the process of reconstructing homes and lives in the wake of Sandy takes place.
    Read the full transcript of President Obama’s news conference today, including the complete Question and Answer portion.
    -----------
    STEVE GODDARD OF REAL SCIENCE ADDS:
    Temperatures have declined over the last 10 years, and the US is experiencing the longest period without a major hurricane strike in 150 years. This past summer had the fewest tornadoes on record. Obama apparently believes that whatever stupid ideas pop up in his head must be true.

    Enlarged

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    Nov 09, 2012Fu and Manabe agree the hot spot is missing
    Joanne Nova
    June 2011

    Yet another study hunted for a form of the missing hot spot– and again the results show the models are unable to make useful predictions.

    The upward rising trend predicted in the models is of critical importance. The models assume that the 1.1 degrees of warming directly due to CO2 will be tripled by feedbacks from humidity and water vapor. Studies like Fu and Manabe are looking to see if the assumptions built into the models are right. If relative humidity stays constant above the tropics throughout the troposphere, we should see the upper troposphere warm faster than the surface.

    Fu and Manabe used satellite data rather than weather balloons, and compared the tropical upper troposphere to the lower middle troposphere during 1979 – 2010. (Other papers I’ve written about compared the upper troposphere to the surface, and mainly used weather balloons.)

    “One of the striking features in GCM‐predicted climate change due to the increase of greenhouse gases is the much enhanced warming in the tropical upper troposphere”

    Satellites cannot separate out the altitudes at narrow resolutions, as the radiosondes can, but they produce reliable data around the entire globe. In this test of the models predictive ability, we should have seen the upper troposphere warm faster than we did. Indeed while the difference in trends was positive, it was so weakly positive as to be not significantly different. In other words, we can’t be sure that the upper troposphere is warming faster than the lower-middle area, though it might be. Even if it is warming, it just isn’t doing it enough to verify the models.

    Given that the IPCC don’t seem to be in a rush to acknowledge the discrepancies between models and observations (heck, they were discovered by the mid-90′s), this is what “90% likely to be right” looks like:

    Enlarged


    36 different models are compared with satellite data. Reality is seemingly not what the models thought it ought to be.

    The trends of T24‐T2LT from both observations and models are all positive (Figure 2, below), indicating that the tropical upper‐middle troposphere is warming faster than lower middle troposphere [Fu and Johanson, 2005]. But the positive trends are only about 0.014 +/- 0.017 K/decade from RSS and 0.005 +/- 0.016 K/decade from UAH, which are not significantly different from zero. In contrast, the T24‐T2LT trend from multi‐model ensemble mean is 0.051 +/- 0.007 K/decade, which is significantly larger than zero. The trends from observations and multi‐model ensemble mean do not fall within each other’s 95% confidence intervals…


    Enlarged

    The black line is the model prediction but the red and blue lines are the RSS and UAH trend lines.

    Maybe the satellites are wrong and not the models:

    This indicates possible common errors among GCMs although we cannot exclude the possibility that the discrepancy between models and observations is partly caused by biases in satellite data.
    But remember that 28 million radiosondes have found similar discrepancies with the models in the tropical upper troposphere. If millions of radiosondes and 30 years of satellite data are both biased, then the models could be right.


    Conclusion:
    IPCC AR4 GCMs overestimate the warming in the tropics for 1979–2010, which is partly responsible for the larger T24‐T2LT trends in GCMs. It is found that the discrepancy between model and observations is also caused by the trend ratio of T24 to T2LT, which is ∼1.2 from models but ∼1.1 from observations. While strong observational evidence indicates that tropical deep‐layer troposphere warms faster than surface, [note we don’t name any...] this study suggests that the AR4 GCMs may exaggerate the increase in static stability between tropical middle and upper troposphere in the last three decades. In view of the importance of the enhanced tropical upper tropospheric warming to the climate sensitivity and to the change of atmospheric circulations, it is critically important to understand the causes responsible for the discrepancy between the models and observations.
    ——————————————–
    Extra information:
    The post that will put this in perspective best is The models are wrong (but only by 400 %). (McKitrick et al 2010)

    The missing hotspot (What they expected to find, and what the weatherballoons didn’t show)
    Even gurus of warming admit the hot spot went missing.

    For other perspectives:
    Roger Pielke discussed this in July, as did Jeff ID on the air vent a few weeks ago.

    REFERENCE

    Fu, Q., S. Manabe, and C. Johanson (2011), On the warming in the tropical upper troposphere: Models versus observations, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L15704, doi:10.1029/2011GL048101. [PDF]



    Nov 08, 2012
    Elections have consequences: Obama’s Second Term Regulations That Will Destroy America
    Beating Election Depression Through Constructive Action: Three Urgent Arenas

    By Larry Bell, Forbes (reprinted with author permission)

    I switched channels after the Ohio results came in and intentionally watched a really dumb action movie in order to get tired enough to sleep. Still in a disconsolate state of shock the next morning, I was in no mood for post-mortem could’a-should’a-would’a mental replays, even lacking sufficient emotional capacity to muster up anger.

    But this is a resilient country. We will survive. And there’s much we can all do to make it better...stronger. And who knows, maybe things won’t be as bad as I have imagined during the president’s second term. Having no more elections to face, maybe now he won’t be as bound to accede to dictates of his far left base. Maybe Democrats and Republicans can find enough common negotiating space to prevent budgetary sequestration from being triggered, and to avoid a disastrous economic plunge over the fiscal cliff.

    These are only a couple of the overarching issues that will drive and shape future developments.

    Within those larger dynamics there are some smaller, yet very important congressional and judiciary arenas where motivated voters can still exert considerable influence. Let’s consider three of them.

    U.N. Arms Trade and Law of the Sea Treaties:

    Just hours after President Obama was re-elected, the U.S. backed a U.N. call to renew debate over a draft Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). Even many U.N. delegates and gun control activists believe this process was put on hold due to presidential campaign concerns. While ATT is represented as a means to regulate only government-to-government transfers and direct sales by manufacturers to governments, it is broadly perceived by skeptics as a strategy for those who oppose Second Amendment rights to ultimately achieve their goal of prohibiting private firearms ownership through vague, innocuous language without media attention.

    Under current plans, the treaty will be submitted to nations early next year for virtually-assured signature and ratification upon receiving a two-thirds vote. And while U.S. treaty ratification will also require an unlikely two-thirds Senate approval...according to a paper published by legal scholar David Kopel and his colleagues in the Bringham Young University Journal of Public Law, there are many ways unratified treaties can work their ways into U.S. laws.

    The authors conclude : “For example, some eminent international disarmament experts have taken the position that the president of the United States may announce that a treaty has entered into force, and thereby become the law of the United States even if the U.S. Senate has never voted to ratify the treaty. The United States Supreme Court has cited unratified treaties (and even an African treaty), and various contemporary foreign law sources, as guidance for interpreting United States constitutional provisions. Likewise, other scholars, writing in a U.N. publication, argue that United Nations gun control documents (notwithstanding the fact that the documents, on their face, have no binding legal effect) represent ‘norms’ of international law.”

    On June 29th, 130 Republican House members sent a letter to President Obama and Secretary Clinton arguing that the proposed treaty infringes on the “fundamental, individual right to keep and bear arms”. The letter charges that “...the U.N.’s actions to date indicate that the ATT is likely to pose significant threats to our national security, foreign policy, and economic interests as well as our constitutional rights.” The lawmakers adamantly insist that the U.S. Government has no right to support a treaty that violates the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

    Although Democrats maintain that the treaty poses no Second Amendment threat, former U.N. ambassador John Bolton, cautions gun owners to take this initiative seriously. He believes that the U.N. “...is trying to act as though this is really just a treaty about international arms trade between nation states, but there is no doubt that the real agenda here is domestic firearms control.”

    There are also some Obama-backed U.N. treaties that defeated globalist-oriented lame-duck members of Congress with nothing to lose may successfully help to push through for ratification before leaving office. One is the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) which would subordinate U.S. naval and drilling operations beyond 200 miles of our coast to a newly established U.N. bureaucracy. If approved, it will grant a Kingston, Jamaica-based International Seabed Authority (ISA) the power to regulate deep-sea oil exploration, and seabed mining.

    As part of the deal, as much as 7% of U.S. government revenue collected from oil and gas companies operating off our coast will be forked over to ISA for redistribution to poorer, landlocked countries.

    This apparently is in penance for America’s audacity in perpetuating prosperity yielded by our Industrial Revolution.

    Like the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol debacle that preceded it, this most recent LOST cause embodies the progressive ideal of subordinating the sovereignty of nation states to authoritarian dictates of a world body. The U.S. would have one vote out of 160 regarding where the money would go, and be obligated to hand over offshore drilling technology to any nation that wants it...for free.
    And who are those lucky international recipients? They will most likely include such undemocratic, despotic and brutal governments as Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Sudan and Zimbabwe...all current voting members of LOST.

    There are also some upcoming treaties with very admirable-sounding titles, but posing much less loveable U.N. regulatory intrusions into other matters of U.S. sovereignty. An example is a global Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) which was signed by our U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice (now famous for false public statements about the Benghazi attack). We already have numerous organizations and statutes that address these needs without U.N. busybodies butting in. Another is a U.N. Treaty on the Rights of the Child, a broadside attack on parent’s rights to limit media programs they can watch, or determine which church they attend.

    Environmental and Energy Regulations:

    According to the annual “Regulator’s Budget” compiled last year by George Washington University and Washington University in St. Louis, the employment of federal government regulators has climbed 13% since Obama took office, while private sector jobs shrank by 5.6%. In fact, if the federal government’s regulatory operations were a business, their $54 billion budget would make them one of the 50 the largest in the country… bigger than McDonald’s, Ford, Disney and Boeing combined.
    Now, with his re-election behind him, President Obama can plow “Forward”, using the EPA and other agencies to expand regulatory intervention into wide-ranging aspects of our lives and economy.

    Particularly hard hit will be those which are highly energy-dependent.

    The American Council for Capital Formation estimates that the new EPA regulations already in place will result in 476,000 to 1,400,000 lost jobs by the end of 2014. Management Information Services, Inc. foresees that up to 2.5 million jobs will be sacrificed, annual household income could decrease by $1,200, and gasoline and residential electricity prices may increase 50% by 2030. The Heritage Foundation projects that the greenhouse gas regulations will cost nearly $7 trillion (2008 dollars) in economic output by 2029.

    Former climate czar Carol Browner was very clear about what;s in store when she told several green groups not to worry, because “President Obama has a big green ‘to-do’ list for 2013 so they’ll get what they want."On the other hand, if you want to build a coal plant, you’ve got a big problem. EPA;s proposed coal ash rule could cost $79 to $110 billion over 20 years, destroying 183,900 to 316,000 jobs. This will have disastrous impacts in states like Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and Missouri. (Remember hearing about some of those states as likely Republican swing states?)
    Now, premised upon climate alarm, which has even been disavowed by EPA’s own internal review of the matter, the agency is proposing the first source-specific emissions standards for new power plants. These restrictions are so strict that they will virtually eliminate coal as a fuel option for future electric power generation.

    While EPA has punted on standards for existing power plants, as well as refineries, we can expect the agency to proceed under auspices of its Clean Air Act (CAA) to issue regulations, industry by industry, until virtually every aspect of the American economy is severely constrained by bureaucratic permitting requirements. These rules are projected to cost more than $300 to $400 billion a year, and will significantly raise the price of gas at the pump and energy in the home.

    This ominous precedent can apply to small private entities as well, including churches, schools, restaurants, hospitals and farms. For example, under proposed federal permitting requirements, a farm whose aggregate emissions exceed CAA permitting thresholds would be required to pay a “cow tax” for each ton of greenhouse gas emitted on an annual basis. EPA itself estimates that this will require more than 37,000 farms and ranches to pay an average $23,000 every year, affecting over 90% of all U.S. livestock production.

    EPA may also tighten farm dust standards as part its review of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for coarse particulate matter (PM10). This would have widespread implications for rural America where the only way to comply will be to reduce numbers of livestock, cut back on tilling of fields, or to shrink or even end businesses altogether.

    There are a large number of other planned EPA air and water regulations either in force or in the works. EPA’s Boiler MACT (Maximum Achievable Control Technology) standards are so restrictive that not even many of the best-performing sources can meet them. Such companies will have no choice but to shut their doors and ship manufacturing jobs overseas. The rule has been projected to reduce U.S. GDP by as much as 1.2 billion dollars, and to destroy nearly 800,000 jobs.

    EPA’s Cement MACT rule could cause 18 plants to shut down, eliminating up to 80,000 road, bridge and building construction workers due to substantially increased cement costs. As with Boiler MACT, EPA had postponed decisions on certain aspects of the rule until after the election.

    Although President Obama previously admitted that the “regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty” of tightening an existing ozone standard would harm jobs and the economy, he still pointed to the fact that it will be reconsidered in 2013. EPA itself estimated that this would cost $90 billion a year. Other studies project that the rule could cost upwards of a trillion dollars and destroy 7.4 million jobs, and put 650 additional counties into a category of “non-attainment”. This is the equivalent of posting a “closed for business” sign on communities which will suffer from severe business and job losses resulting from large numbers of plant closures.

    A proposed new guidance document for waters covered by the Clean Water Act, reinterprets recent Supreme Court decisions to allow EPA to expand federal control over virtually every body of water in the United States, no matter how small. EPA’s own analysis of the document estimated that up to 17% of current non-jurisdictional determinations would be considered jurisdictional using the new guidance. Such federal guidance will impose large additional regulatory responsibilities and costs for states and municipalities.
    EPA also plans to expand a universe of federal storm-water regulations. Included are first-time standards for post-construction and retrofit requirements for storm-water systems. This can force cities to change existing buildings, storm-water sewers, and streets. It may even mandate the use of “green infrastructure” techniques (like “green roofs,” rain gardens, permeable pavement) to replace conventional storm-water management practices. All this will put enormous cost burdens on states, municipalities, and just about anyone who owns or wants to develop property.

    EPA is working to curtail hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking") that is providing access to America’s huge oil and gas resources through a variety of mechanisms. One strategy applies guidance measures which restrict use of diesel fuels in the process, stripping states of the primacy granted to them through the Safe Drinking Water Act. This is premised upon a broadly criticized study purportedly linking fracking to water contamination. Other back-door regulatory mechanisms include the Toxic Substances Control Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Clean Air Act, and potentially, applications of Effluent Limitations Guidelines for both shale gas extraction and coal-bed methane.

    Fracking is not only under attack by EPA, but by more than a dozen other agencies as well. Included are the Department of Energy, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the Center for Disease Control, the Department of Agriculture, and even the Securities and Exchange Commission. The BLM, under Secretary Salazar’s control, will now commence finalizing new regulations.

    These are but some of the new and proposed federal regulations that will significantly impact our future, and we can be certain that we will see many more. So what influence can we have? Well, in addition to whatever direct persuasion that can be exerted through our Congressional representatives, there’s also another avenue...the judiciary.

    The Courts:

    While it’s a difficult, costly and lengthy slog to do so, unwarranted federal regulations are successfully being overturned in court thanks to aggressive litigants and sensible judges. In a recent example, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit struck down the signature “Cross-State Air Pollution Rule” enacted by EPA a year ago that was supposed to reduce air pollution emitted in one state and carried to another, even by levels exceeding the originator state’s federal air quality standards. The court also found that EPA acted illegally in dictating measures to be used in compliance, rather than allowing states to develop their own plans according to statutory provisions.

    Another August ruling by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals spared the state of Texas from “arbitrary and capricious” rejection of utility permitting processes that put EPA in the board rooms and boiler plants of industrial and utility companies. The finding determined that 120 unjustly targeted permit holders were wrongly mandated to ‘de-flex” under threat of federal and civil sanctions with no environmental benefit. Although not a single pound of emissions reductions resulted, the companies had been forced to spend millions of dollars to satisfy what amounted to a bureaucratic paper exercise.

    In another ruling on July 11, Judge Reggie B. Walton of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia rejected EPA’s attempts to regulate Appalachian surface coal mining based upon “final guidance” which had been falsely characterized as “non-binding”. The court agreed with plaintiffs that EPA had overstepped the authority given to it by Congress under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act and the Clean Water Act. The opinion also validated positions of state government parties and the regulated community that EPA cannot disrupt the regulatory balance created by Congress for mining governance in which the EPA has no direct role. This provides a precedent for other legal challenges to EPA’s use of guidance documents for unauthorized regulatory purposes.

    In a similar case, the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled in 2011 to reject EPA’s reliance on guidance documents that were never adopted as administrative rules under the Clean Air Act which violated rights of states to propose alternatives. And in still another case, the Natural Resources Defense Council successfully challenged that the EPA violated the Administrative Procedures Act’s notice and comments requirements by unilaterally issuing “guidance” as a policy statement or interpretive rule on a case-by-case basis without notice and comment, thus avoiding the statutory rulemaking process.
    Now, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the vitally important leading court for legal challenges to new regulation, is itself under attack by liberal media led by the Washington Post and New York Times.

    Although many of the court’s opinions have been joined by Democratic and Republican appointees, particular outrage centers on a July finding that rejected a Security and Exchange Commission’s so-called “proxy access” rule which would have increased union power over corporate boards.

    A key target of liberal ire appears to be Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who, at the age of 47, is young enough for consideration as a future Supreme Court nomination. The left knows that repeated media portrayals of conservative judges and their opinions as radical or out of the mainstream is an effective tactic.

    The scariest consequences of this past election revolve around influences upon future Supreme Court decisions...especially concerning judicial interpretations of constitutional protections recognized by the Second Amendment. Imagine more justices in the philosophical mold of the president’s most recent addition, Elana Kagan, a gun-unfriendly attorney who participated in writing the 1998 Clinton White House executive order banning imports of 58 types of “semiautomatic assault rifles”. Then there’s also Sonia Sotomayor, an Obama nominee who joined Justice Stephen Breyer’s dissenting opinion in the narrow 5-4 McDonald v. City of Chicago decision which clarified that Second Amendment rights apply to states.

    An Obama reelection presents an extreme risk of replacing at least one of five Supreme Court justices who have vindicated Second Amendment protections in the precarious Heller and McDonald decisions. If this were to happen, our right to bear arms might become a lost historical memory for future oppressed generations to read about.

    With four more years ahead, and the Executive Branch, the Senate and the mainstream media stacked against conservative values, we have no choice but to prepare for a regulatory tsunami and just hold back the floods where we can. This isn’t going to be easy, but then, nobody ever promised us a White House Rose Garden. We must now double-down on our efforts to win it back before only restrictive thorns remain, and before our economic future turns to brambles.
    ---------------
    Green agenda threatens economic future

    By Paul Driessen

    When American voters re-elected President Obama, they also returned his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Interior and Energy departments and wide-ranging agenda for “fundamentally transforming” our nation.

    This will mean cementing Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, higher taxes and rampant spending. It also will bring more disputes over energy and environmental regulations, the vanguard of Mr. Obama’s determined campaign to eliminate hydrocarbons that power our economy and to embrace more “green” energy. The conflict will be fought primarily on six battlegrounds:

    Carbon taxes: Hurricane Sandy presented a fresh pretext for regulating and taxing hydrocarbons. No respectable climatologist or meteorologist believes atmospheric carbon dioxide conjured up the destructive storm, but climate alarmism always has been about political science, not real science.

    Democratic Rep. Jim McDermott’s Managed Carbon Price Act imputes a cost for CO2 emissions and compels energy producers and users to buy carbon permits. The president is considering a direct carbon tax that he says will raise billions of dollars annually and reduce deficits. Both ought to be dead on arrival in the House. Another pointless round of United Nations-sponsored climate treaty discussions will take place soon in Doha, Qatar.

    The real threat is EPA regulations limiting CO2 from power plants and other sources by executive fiat.
    With China, India and other developing countries massively increasing their “greenhouse gas” emissions, none of these proposals would reduce atmospheric CO2 levels. They would, however, put government in charge of our entire economy, sharply increase energy prices for every business and household, kill millions of jobs, ensure that new tax revenues never materialize, and hurt poor families most.

    War on hydrocarbons: America has abundant hydrocarbons, onshore and offshore, including centuries’ worth of natural gas for heating, petrochemicals, electricity generation and vehicles. With little to hold their pre-election anti-energy instincts in check, the White House, EPA and Interior may still oppose the Keystone XL pipeline, further delay onshore and offshore drilling, and unleash a blitzkrieg of new rules on hydraulic fracturing and coal-fired power plants.

    That would stifle job creation, revenue generation and economic growth while leaving the nation dependent on despotic regimes and costly renewable-energy schemes.

    Renewable-energy preferences: Antipathy toward oil, gas and coal is matched by the pincer move of mandates, fuel standards and subsidies for wind, solar and biofuel power. The first pitched battle will decide whether the production tax credit for wind-based electricity will be extended again.

    Other battles will be fought over corn for food versus cars; growing opposition to bird-killing industrial wind facilities and habitat-smothering solar projects; the impact of pricey renewable energy on families, hospitals, factories, businesses and jobs; and corrupt corporate cronyism among politicians and the heavily subsidized campaign contributors they keep in business.

    Unequal treatment under law: Mandates and subsidies are not enough to keep industrial wind facilities solvent. They also require exemptions from laws governing endangered species, migratory birds, environmental reviews and other issues.

    Even the most speculative environmental impacts can scuttle oil, gas, coal and uranium proposals — and oil companies are routinely assessed major fines if ducks die after landing in uncovered waste pits. However, wind operators incur no penalties for killing thousands of eagles, hawks, whooping cranes, bats and other rare and vital flying creatures every year. Citizens, companies, courts and legislators are expressing growing intolerance for separate regulatory regimes and unequal treatment under law.

    Agenda science: Sound risk assessment and honest cost-benefit analyses have been replaced by conjecture, exaggeration and agenda-driven politicized science at too many federal agencies. EPA is the worst offender, but the Interior, Energy and even Defense departments also are culprits.

    Risks from climate change, mercury, soot and industrial chemicals are inflated routinely, as are the purported benefits of exorbitantly expensive regulations. Meanwhile, the impact of rules on energy prices, business profits and competitiveness, jobs and, thus, overall human health and welfare are ignored.

    With total federal regulatory compliance costs now estimated at $1.75 trillion and 8.8 billion hours annually, this issue could become a legislative and regulatory Battle of Kursk.

    Subsidized pressure and propaganda: Billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies continue to flow each year to bureaucratic zealots, environmentalist pressure groups, universities and other organizations. These dollars fund junk science, strained justifications for indefensible rules, more pressure to regulate for increasingly diminished returns, and outright propaganda.

    Federal and state legislators need to hold investigative hearings, demand accountability, cut bloated agency budgets that enable such expenditures, and question why tax-exempt activist groups should receive taxpayer money funneled through government agencies.

    America can continue paying billions in subsidies annually to prop up “green” technologies and agenda-driven science, or we can generate tens of billions a year in royalties and taxes, create millions of jobs and rejuvenate our economy through hydrocarbons, nuclear power and common-sense regulations.

    Will President Obama, Democrats and executive branch agencies be receptive to bipartisan approaches - to institutionalizing all-of-the-above energy decisions that make scientific, economic, environmental and technological sense? Or will they be even more entrenched, knowing the White House can act via executive decree if Congress does nothing?

    The answer will determine whether the United States becomes an economic powerhouse once again or an enormous Greece. Blessed with more oil, gas and coal than almost any other nation on earth, we must not refuse to develop these resources.

    Paul Driessen is senior policy adviser for the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow and author of “Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death” (Merril Press, 2012).

    Read more: DRIESSEN: The coming environmental battlegrounds - Washington Times
    ---------------------
    Just prior to the election Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) did an interview with WND concerning the surprise regulations that Pres. Obama had in store for after the election. These regulations will most likely go into effect in the very near future now that Obama won re-election.

    Inhofe told WND’s Greg Corombos that Obama is trying to destroy everything that has made America great. You said that Obama has a war on fossil fuels and that he seems to be doing everything possible to undermine and destroy America’s oil, natural gas and coal industries. He said that America could be totally independent from Middle East and other foreign sources of fossil fuels but Obama has blocked all efforts to do so.
    In the defense industry Obama seems to be weakening US strength. In his first budget he destroyed the F-22, our only fifth generation fighter. Obama also destroyed our lift capacity by killing the C 17 along with our future combat system. The US had a plan to prevent missiles from Iran reaching the US but Obama killed this as well.

    Inhofe stated that there are a number of regulations that would have a negative impact on America that Obama was waiting until after the election to put in place. Many of these regulations were measures that Congress would not pass, so Obama is planning on bypassing Congress and implementing them by making them new regulations. Some of those regulations mentioned are:

    Tier Three Gas Regulations: Raising the price of gas at the pumps by 9 cents.

    Water Guidance Regulation: Federal government controls any navigable waterway, but the new regulation would remove the word ‘navigable’ and put any standing water under federal government control. This means any standing rain water, irrigation ponds and runoff on farmlands would come under government control.

    Farm Dust Regulation: Would regulate the amount of dust allowed from a farm field during plowing, tilling or even between growing seasons.

    Spill Prevention and Control Counter Measure

    Boiler MACT: Controls emissions from manufacturing boilers. New regulations will establish standards that are below what many companies can achieve and financially remain in business. This could potentially cost up to 800,000 jobs.

    Greenhouse Gas Regulations: Annual cost of $400 to $500 billion.

    Hydraulic Fracturing: Would place all hydraulic fracturing under federal control.

    At the end of the interview, Sen. Inhofe mentioned the comment Obama made to Russian President Medvedev that was caught on microphone. Obama told him to tell Putin that he will have a lot more flexibility once he is re-elected to do the things he wants to do.

    Remember, this was recorded just prior to the election, but listen to what Inhofe says about Obama purposely violating laws and how he will work to destroy farming, fossil fuels and industry in America.
    Read more.

    See more



    Nov 04, 2012
    Was Hurricane Sandy A Sign Of The “New Normal”?
    By Art Horn

    In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy people with no meteorological training at all are climbing high atop media soap boxes, proclaiming that Hurricane Sandy is part of a “new normal” of extreme weather. Robert Puentes, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program said “Since we keep seeing large scale storms (the derecho this summer, Irene, Isabel) it may be wise for transit and infrastructure planners and officials to think of these as part of a new normal,” This claim is based on the often repeated warning that the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide is causing the weather to become different than it was in the past, therefore creating a “new normal”. In other words, in the past the weather was “normal”, now because of the way we make energy, it is different and it’s our fault and we better do something about it, i.e. control the weather.
    The Governor of New York and the Mayor of New York city have no training in meteorology or hurricanes but made statements implying that Sandy was the result of climate change. Governor Cuomo said “These are extreme weather patterns. The frequency has been increasing”. He has not done his homework with respect to hurricanes. Research by Dr. Ryan Maue shows that global hurricane activity has not increased since 1978 and has declined since the early 1990s. Meteorologist Joe D’Aleo quoted Dr. William Gray, the famous hurricane forecaster from Colorado State University, who predicted the current period of increased North Atlantic Hurricanes back in the 1980s. Dr. Gray said the increase will be due to changes in the ocean warming and cooling cycle know as the AMO. Hurricanes are not new to New Jersey or New England. They have been wreaking havoc on these regions since colonial times and before.

    Enlarged. Last 4-decades of Global and Northern Hemisphere Accumulated Cyclone Energy: 24 month running sums. Note that the year indicated represents the value of ACE through the previous 24-months for the Northern Hemisphere (bottom line/gray boxes) and the entire global (top line/blue boxes). The area in between represents the Southern Hemisphere total ACE.

    In the media business, implying that a big storm like Sandy is part of a “new normal” is an opportunity to create doubt and uncertainty. Planting doubt and uncertainty in the minds of the audience increases fear and fear is what sells news. The idea that there is a “new normal” is scare...details at eleven.
    In order to say we are experiencing a “new normal” one must first understand what “normal” really is. The only way to do that is to understand both the history of hurricanes in the North Atlantic Ocean and their behavior in relation to atmospheric wind currents that dictate their destiny. The reason hurricane Sandy struck where it did was not due to a new normal. The storm struck because it was directed there by a wind current unrelated to the hurricane. That wind current is called a negatively tilted trough.
    In many respects hurricane Sandy was no different than any of the thousands of hurricanes that have threatened the United States east coast in centuries past. In any given hurricane season, from June through November, there are hurricanes that pass harmlessly off the US east coast with hardly a mention. In fact most people have no idea the storm is there. The numbers of storms varies from year to year but in almost every season there is at least one or two that pass close but harmlessly offshore. In some years a negatively tilted wind current in the atmosphere develops that changes all of that.
    When you drive down a road and there is a detour, you must change the road you were on. In that case you have no choice but to go in a different direction. That’s just what happened to hurricane Sandy, it ran into an atmospheric detour. That detour was a powerful negatively tilted trough or jetstream wind current that swept down from western Canada into the southern United States. This negatively tilted jetstream changed the road Sandy was on. Sandy was trying to cruise out to sea but this jetstream grabbed the storm and drove it right into the Northeast. In the vast majority of cases over many decades neither of these two weather systems collide at the same time along the US east coast, this time they did. It is not the first time.
    During the course of any year it is not unusual for these negatively tilted jetstream troughs to develop along the US east coast, in fact they are quite common. What is uncommon is that there’s a hurricane barreling along on a separate road that intersects with the trough. As they say timing is everything. In the hurricane season of 2010 there were twelve hurricanes, twice the long term average of six, but none hit the US because the wind currents steered them away. This is what happens in most years. In the late 1930s a negatively tilted jetstream and a hurricane, much more powerful than Sandy, came together. The Great New England Hurricane of September 21st 1938 was a category 3 storm that devastated much of New England with winds estimated at 120 miles per hour with gusts as high as 160! Interestingly, this largest storm to affect New England in the last 400 years, occurred with carbon dioxide levels at 309 parts per million (ppm), far less than today’s 392 ppm. Excuse me! Are you saying that a storm much larger and more destructive than hurricane Sandy struck when carbon dioxide was much lower? Yes.
    Along the US eastern seaboard there have been many hurricanes in the past that have been captured by the winds and slammed into the coast. On September the 3rd 1821 a category 3 hurricane struck dead center on New York City. The hurricane’s winds drove the water into a 13 foot surge that was pushed all the way up to canal street. The Battery area sustained massive flooding and destruction. Ships were driven into the city and the Hudson and East rivers likely joined. Amazingly, all this surge and destruction took place at low tide. Hurricane Sandy produced a storm surge of 13.9 feet but at high tide which was at 8:53 pm and with a full moon. (Those two factors made a difference of 6 feet). Significantly, in 1821 sea level in New York was at least one foot lower than it is today. If the hurricane of 1821 struck New York today the storm surge flooding would be worse than from Sandy, possibly much worse since sea level is at least a foot higher today (add 7 feet to 13.9). Oh, and by the way, in 1821 atmospheric carbon dioxide was 280 ppm., that’s 110 ppm less than today, how inconvenient.
    Hurricane Sandy is a terrible tragedy for millions of people. That fact is that today, in our modern world, we enjoy the many benefits of electricity and all the other conveniences of technology. But all these amazing benefits also make us more vulnerable to the wrath of nature. Twenty five years ago, long before there was a lot of talk about global warming, Dr. William Gray predicted that a new era of destructive hurricanes was coming. Unfortunately his prediction was correct. The “new normal” is the old normal, it just comes and goes in cycles.
    - See more.

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    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    Oct 30, 2012

    Helping Bloomberg understand ‘stupid’
    Anthony Watts

    This cover today is making the rounds in the alarmosphere, where a single storm, a single data point in the hundreds of hurricanes that have struck the USA during its history, is now apparently “proof” of global warming causing bad weather. It is just another silly example of Tabloid Climatology™.

    Hurricane expert Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. says:
    The only accurate part of this Bloomberg BusinessWeek cover is “stupid”
    There, I fixed it for you.

    The US Has Had 285 Hurricane Strikes Since 1850: “The U.S. has always been vulnerable to hurricanes. 86% of U.S. hurricane strikes occurred with CO2 below Hansen’s safe level of 350 PPM”
    If there’s anything in this data at all, it looks like CO2 is preventing more US landfalling hurricanes.

    Data from: http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/...st18512009.txt

    Source of graph, Steve Goddard.
    In case you wish to tell Bloomberg about this fix:
    Bloomberg Businessweek Editor
    Patti Straus
    +1 212 617 3279

    UPDATE: from Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.
    Normalized US Hurricane Damage 1900-2012, Including Sandy

    The graph above shows normalized US hurricane damage, based on data from ICAT, which applies an extension to the methodology of Pielke et al. 2008. The 2012 estimate for Sandy comes from Moody’s, and is an estimate. The red line represents a linear best fit to the data, it is flat.
    -------------
    Send This Video to Everyone You Know; Obama taking donations from Osama Bin Laden, asks for more
    Steve Goddard, Real Science


    “Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”
    “Coal-powered plants, you know, natural gas, you name it, whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that cost on to consumers.”
    Barack Obama

    -----------------
    Obama Taking Money From Osama - Wants More
    Posted on October 30, 2012

    WASHINGTON: Using a Pakistani Internet Protocol and proxy server, a disposable credit card and a fake address, “Osama bin Laden” has successfully donated twice to Barack Obama’s presidential re-election campaign.
    The “Bin Laden” donations, actually made by WND staff, included a listed occupation of “deceased terror chief” and a stated employer of “al-Qaida.”
    “Bin Laden” is currently set up on the official campaign website to contribute more to Obama’s campaign. The name is also registered as a volunteer.
    Since the “foreign” contribution was sent, “Bin Laden’s” email address has received several solicitations from Obama’s campaign asking for more donations.
    Obama accepts ‘Osama bin Laden’ donations



    Oct 28, 2012
    Election Campaigns Prove Global Warming Crisis Skeptics Won The Climate Debate
    UPDATE:
    Dear Friends
    We’re proudly bringing to you our new short film The Dinosaur Election, which points out an interesting election irony. As HotAir wrote about it: “If you watch nothing else today, watch this.”

    In this five minute documentary, we show how Ohio and Pennsylvania - two significant swing states in the election - are currently experiencing localized economic booms due to fracking. Fracking is a method of extracting oil and natural gas from previously inaccessible shale rock. Incumbent Presidents always do well when voters feel optimistic about the economy, so this feel-good factor sweeping OH and PA could swing the elections in an unexpected way.

    But the prospect of President Obama getting re-elected because of fracking drips with irony, because he may use the flexibility of his second term to over-regulate fracking to please the environmental wing of the Democratic Party.

    Please watch and share this timely and important short film with your friends and join us to discuss it on Facebook and Twitter!

    Thanks!
    Ann, Phelim and Magda


    Evidenced by public cooling towards global warming peril as a hot campaign issue, it is apparent that the Democrat party has been encountering a political climate change. The subject obviously hasn’t been viewed as a winning issue, nor has the anti-carbon “alternative energy” rationale supported by that contrived hysteria.

    Nope, you’d hardly know from the presidential and V.P. debates that, as the 2012 Democrat party platform warns: “We know that climate change is one of the biggest threats of this generation...an economic, environmental, and national security catastrophe in the making.” In fact, it mentions global warming 18 times, stating that: “We affirm the science of climate change, commit to significantly reducing the pollution [carbon dioxide plant food] that causes climate change, and know we have to meet this challenge by driving smart policies [i.e., plug-in cars] that lead to greater growth in clean energy generation and result in a range of economic and social benefits [to favored fund-raisers and companies]. President Obama has been a leader on this issue.”
    But on the stage like a man-caused hurricane, he was nowhere in sight. Nor were the authors of their failed cap-and-trade bill, Henry Waxman or Ed Markey. The only mentions of these “threats” were voiced in a reference to “increasing climate volatility” in an obscure speech by Advanced Energy Economy co-founder Tom Steyer, a passing comment about “reducing greenhouse gases” in Bill Clinton’s address , and John Kerry’s statement that “an exceptional country does care about the rise of the oceans and the future of the country.”
    Even Senator Kerry seems finally to have gotten the message that that “less is more” now applies to this tiresome topic. Frustrated over what he called “the flat-Earth caucus” of global warming skeptics, he recently said: “Even amid the ‘Tuesday Group’...a bi-partisan block of lawmakers, mostly Democrats, who are interested in energy issues… you can’t talk about climate now. People just turn off. It’s extraordinary. Only for national security and jobs will they open their minds.”
    You gotta feel his pain. He and Independent Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman had worked hard to push a global climate crisis-premised 2010 carbon cap-and-trade bill, only to see its prospects for passage swept away in a Republican House cleaning. Kerry then charged that opponents to the legislation “made up their own science. They made up their own arguments. The Republicans created this idea of [carbon credit] trading because it avoided command and control by the Federal Government. Then they just decided to pick up and brand this a negative.”
    He might very well be right about that negative branding, and not just only by Republicans. Egregious ClimateGate and related U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scandals have prompted many to rethink which side of the climate/energy issue “has made up their own science and arguments”.
    An August 2011 Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of American adults showed that 69% said it is at least “somewhat likely” that some scientists have falsified research data in order to support their own theories and beliefs, including 40% who said this is “very likely”. (The number who said it’s likely is up 10 points since December 2009.) And while Republicans and adults not affiliated with either major political party felt stronger than Democrats that some scientists have falsified data to support their global warming theories, 51% of the Democrats also agreed.
    This skeptical trend is likely to continue. While no sane scientists doubt that climate changes, or that our planet has been warming, at least from the time the last Ice Age and much more recent “Little Ice Age” ended, there’s no evidence that alarm-premised economy-ravaging carbon regulation schemes are warranted. Despite elevated atmospheric CO2 levels, there actually hasn’t been any significant warming over more than one and one-half decades. Records show that global temperatures have been up and down since 1997, but are now at the same place they were at the beginning of that year.
    So does this mean that they won’t rise again? No, as generally recognized, climate changes are measured in multi-decadal timescales. Yet this routine standard didn’t inhibit Al Gore his acolytes from declaring that a previous warm period following 40 years of flat temperatures that lasted from 1980 to 1996 signaled a man-made disaster.
    Perhaps there is actually little mystery as to why climate concern hasn’t been featured by Dems as a debating point. It might just be because they recognize that lots of voters are weary of witnessing many billions of tax dollars squandered on phony climate alarm-premised green subsidy fiascoes and empty promises of energy security and employment benefits.
    In January 2009, President Obama pledged: “We will put Americans to work in new jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced-jobs building solar panels and wind turbines.” Then, undeterred by dismal experiences here and abroad, he renewed a commitment to “double down” on this agenda in his 2012 State of the Union speech. So just how well is that approach working so far?
    Well, about 20 of those government-backed energy companies have run into financial trouble, ranging from layoffs to bankruptcies. Seventy-one percent of those Energy Department green energy grants and loans have gone to projects involving major presidential campaign money bundlers including members of his National Finance Committee, or those who contributed to the Democratic Party...donors who raised $457,000, then received taxpayer-supplied project grants or loans totaling nearly $11.35 billion.
    In fact, a report issued by the Government Accountability Office, the investigatory arm of Congress, raised concerns last year about favoritism in awarding some stimulus loan guarantees. The Energy Department’s own inspector general admitted to Congress that there might be reasons for such suspicion- that some contracts may have been steered to “friends and family.” Accordingly, the Energy Department’s inspector general is launching more than 100 criminal investigations into its own green energy program awards.
    Maybe it has been a smart idea for the Democrats to go a bit light on the president’s record on climate and energy achievements after all, and concentrate their message on really critical matters...like switching from subsidies for green energy to subsidies for Sesame Street and contraceptives for female law students. And hey, why not let the planet heal itself just as it always has, even before Obama took charge?
    In any case, one thing appears very clear. According to the presidential campaign priorities they emphasized, Democrats no longer seem to believe that global warming is an urgent subject warranting debate.


    Oct 21, 2012
    The REALLY inconvenient truths about global warming and UN global governance
    Last week we explosively revealed a 16-year ‘pause’ in rising temperatures - triggering a bitter debate. You decide what the real facts are…
    By DAVID ROSE, PUBLISHED: 16:18 EST, 20 October 2012 | UPDATED: 05:22 EST, 21 October 2012

    Last week The Mail on Sunday provoked an international storm by publishing a new official world temperature graph showing there has been no global warming since 1997. The figures came from a database called Hadcrut 4 and were issued by the Met Office and the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia University.

    We received hundreds of responses from readers, who were overwhelmingly critical of those climate change experts who believe that global warming is inevitable.
    But the Met Office, whose lead was then followed by climate change campaigners, accused The Mail on Sunday of cherry-picking data in order to mislead readers. It even claimed it had not released a ‘report’, as we had stated, although it put out the figures from which we drew our graph ten days ago.
    The Mail on Sunday revealed figures which appeared to show a 16-year ‘pause’ in global warming
    Another critic said that climate expert Professor Judith Curry had protested at the way she was represented in our report. However, Professor Curry, a former US National Research Council Climate Research Committee member and the author of more than 190 peer-reviewed papers, responded: ‘A note to defenders of the idea that the planet has been warming for the past 16 years. Raise the level of your game. Nothing in the Met Office’s statement… effectively refutes Mr Rose’s argument that there has been no increase in the global average surface temperature for the past 16 years.
    ‘Use this as an opportunity to communicate honestly with the public about what we know and what we don’t know about climate change. Take a lesson from other scientists who acknowledge the ‘pause’.’ The Met Office now confirms on its climate blog that no significant warming has occurred recently: ‘We agree with Mr Rose that there has only been a very small amount of warming in the 21st Century.’
    Here, we answer some of the key questions on climate change - and invite readers to make their own choice;
    Q Is the world warming or not?
    Expert Judith Curry
    A The Hadcrut 4 figures that show a ‘pause’ in warming lasting nearly 16 years are drawn from more than 3,000 measuring stations on land and at sea. Hadcrut 4 is one of several similar global databases that reveal the same thing: that since January 1997 there has been no statistically significant warming of the Earth’s surface.
    Between 1980 and the end of 1996, the planet warmed at a rate close to 0.2 degrees per decade. Since then, says the Met Office, the trend has been a much lower 0.03 degrees per decade.
    However, world average temperature measurements are subject to an error of plus or minus 0.1 degrees, while any attempt to calculate a trend for the period 1997-2012 has an in-built statistical error of plus or minus 0.4 degrees. The claim that there has been any statistically significant warming for the past 16 years is therefore unsustainable.
    Q Why does it matter if the world is warming or not?
    A For years, the Government’s energy and climate policy has been dominated by the belief that we need swift, drastic and expensive reductions in carbon dioxide emissions to avert imminent catastrophe. In September, The Guardian claimed there were ‘less than 50 months to avoid climate disaster’. These fears are based on computer models that show temperatures continuing to rise in step with levels of CO2.
    The 2007 Fourth Assessment Report of the UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said: ‘For the next two decades, a warming of about 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade is projected for a range of emission scenarios’ - a prediction it said was solid because this rate of increase was already being observed.
    But while CO2 levels have continued to rise since 1997, warming has paused. This leads Prof Curry to say the IPCC’s models are ‘incomplete’, because they do not adequately account for natural factors such as long-term ocean temperature cycles and a decline in solar output, which have suppressed the warming effects of CO2.
    The Met Office and the CRU’s Professor Phil Jones say a “plateau’” of between 15 and 17 years is to be expected. But if the warming does not start again soon, the models will be open to challenge.
    Q Did The Mail on Sunday ‘cherry-pick’ data to disguise an underlying warming trend?
    A Some critics claim this newspaper misled readers by choosing start and end dates that hide the continued warming. In fact, we looked at the period since 1997 because that’s when the previous warming trend stopped, and our graph ended in August 2012 because that is the last month for which Hadcrut 4 figures were available. In April, the Met Office released figures up to the end of 2010 an extremely warm year which meant it was able to say there had been a statistically significant warming trend after 1997, albeit a very small one. However, 2011 and 2012 so far have been much cooler, meaning the trend has disappeared. This may explain why the updated figures were issued last week without a media fanfare.
    Q But isn’t it true that the science is ‘settled’?
    A Some scientists say the pause is illusory – if you strip out the effects of El Nino (when the South Pacific gets unpredictably warmer by several degrees), and La Nina (its cold counterpart), the underlying warming trend remains. Both phenomena have a huge impact on world weather.
    Other experts point out one of the biggest natural factors behind the plateau is the fact that in 2008 the temperature cycle in the Pacific flipped from ‘warm mode’, in which it had been locked for the previous 40 years, to ‘cold mode’, meaning surface water temperatures fell. A cold Pacific cycle causes fewer and weaker El Ninos, and more, stronger La Ninas.
    Prof Curry said that stripping out these phenomena made ‘no physical sense’. She added that natural phenomena and the CO2 greenhouse effect interact with each other, and cannot meaningfully be separated. It’s not just that the ‘cold mode’ has partly caused the plateau.
    According to Prof Curry and others, the previous warm Pacific cycle and other natural factors, such as a high solar output, accounted for some of the warming seen before 1997 – some say at least half of it. Other scientists say that heat has somehow been absorbed by the waters deep in the oceans. However, the evidence for this is contested, and there are no historical records with which to compare recent deepwater readings. In the wake of the pause, the scientific ‘consensus’ looks much less settled than it did a few years ago.
    Q When will warming start again?
    A The truth is no one knows. It is likely that in the 2020s, the Atlantic cycle – currently in warm mode – will also flip to cold, so that for some years both the Pacific and Atlantic cycles will be cold at the same time. When this happens, world temperatures may decline, as they did in the Forties.
    Prof Curry said: ‘If we are currently in a plateau and possibly headed for cooling, then sometime in the middle of the century we would likely see another period with a large warming trend’ She added: ‘Because of natural variability, it is impossible to pinpoint what 2100 would look like. The climate sensitivity to greenhouse warming is still pretty uncertain, and it is not clear whether or to what extent man-made factors will dominate the climate of this period.”
    For the world to be two degrees warmer in 2100 than it is now - as the IPCC has predicted - warming would not only have to restart but also proceed much faster than it has before. Since 1880, temperatures have risen by around 0.75 degrees.
    Q But isn’t the world still much warmer than at any time in recorded history?
    A Ever since it was published on the cover of the IPCC’s Third Assessment report in 2001, the ‘hockey stick’ graph showing stable or declining temperatures since the year 1000, followed by a steep rise in the 20th Century, has been controversial. There were no thermometers in 1000, so scientists use ‘proxy’ data from items such as tree rings, lake sediments and ice cores. The hockey stick authors have also been accused of eliminating the ‘medieval warm period’ (MWP) at the end of the first millennium.
    Two new separate peer-reviewed studies, published in prestigious academic journals last week, reinstated it. The first study, led by Bo Christiansen of the Danish Meteorological Institute, concluded: ‘The level of warmth during the peak of the MWP in the second half of the 10th Century, equalled or slightly exceeded the mid-20th Century warming.’
    There was also a pronounced warming period in Roman times.
    Q So where does that leave us?
    A Despite The Guardian’s bold claim that we have ‘50 months to save the world’, other evidence suggests that there are still decades left in which to plan an energy strategy driven by something other than panic. In Britain, in the short to medium term, that would mean building modern ‘dual cycle’ gas power stations, which produce very clean energy and, unlike inefficient wind turbines, do not require subsidies to be economic. In the longer term, we could be investing heavily in research into new forms of zero-carbon power, such as nuclear fusion, which are much closer to reality than most people realise.
    Q Surely we can leave it to our elected representatives to research all the arguments thoroughly and then act accordingly with our taxes?
    A Tim Yeo is the chairman of the Commons Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change, which advises the Government on energy policy. Lord Deben is chairman of the Government Climate Change Committee, which also gives direct advice on emissions targets. Both Mr Yeo and Lord Deben have significant personal stakes in the ‘renewable’ energy industry, which benefits to the tune of billions of pounds a year from wind subsidies.
    Read more.


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  8. #8
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    Oct 18, 2012

    Gergis et al hockey stick paper withdrawn - finally
    Posted on October 18, 2012 by Anthony Watts

    Between this withdrawal and the Esper et al paper showing the MWP and RWP warmer than today, Mike Mann must be having a really, really, bad day. Even SuperMandia in tights can’t help. Thanks to Richard Tol (and Marc Morano) for this tip:

    Readers may recall Steve McIntyre’s evisceration of Gergis et al. Steve’s question has now been answered. In retrospect, it looks like David Karoly’s puffed up legal whining was just that, puffed up.
    Retraction Watch reports this update:
    In June, we wrote about the withdrawal of a paper claiming that temperatures in the last 60 years were warmest in the last 1,000 years. At the time, we reported, following posts by others, that the authors had been made aware of errors in their work and were withdrawing it to correct their calculations.
    For several months, the page housing the Journal of Climate study read:
    The requested article is not currently available on this site.
    It still does. But another page that should house the paper now reads, as commenter Skiphil notes:
    Due to errors discovered in this paper during the publication process, it was withdrawn by the authors prior to being published in final form. (My emphasis. BB)
    In June, one of the authors, David Karoly, told us and others he expected to resubmit the paper to the journal, and that’s what the University of Melbourne also reports on top of the original press release about the paper (also noted by Skiphil):
    Scientific study resubmitted.
    An issue has been identified in the processing of the data used in the study, “Evidence of unusual late 20th century warming from an Australasian temperature reconstruction spanning the last millennium” by Joelle Gergis, Raphael Neukom, Ailie Gallant, Steven Phipps and David Karoly, accepted for publication in the Journal of Climate.
    The manuscript has been re-submitted to the Journal of Climate and is being reviewed again.
    ================
    For all that posturing and mannian bluster displayed by Gergis and Karoly, in the end, it was simply bad science that required retraction. Given the screening errors Steve has pointed out, I wonder if retooling it can make it publishable again.


    Oct 08, 2012
    Middle class and the poor would be hurt hard in a second Obama term from US and UN policies
    Update: Navy SEALS Respond After Media Matters Calls Them “Gutless”

    The median income of the first Obama term for the middle class has declined 8% and gasoline prices have doubled while heating oil has increased 50%. Electricity prices have increased 7%, in places, more. With talk of a carbon tax and/or cap-and-trade in the Obama second term, the costs for gasoline is likely o increase another $3. For a two car family that drives 20,000 miles per year, that will mean additional cost of $3000/year on top of the $2 from the last four years. Add to that heating homes in winter will increases another 50% and if the UK is an example, electricity prices as Obama promised would necessarily skyrocket (carbon taxes in the UK are threatening to double electricity costs). All of the health care taxes and costs will kick in (mu provider already announced a 22% increase).

    If all of that wasn’t enough, Bill Clinton’s mentor, Dick Morris sees another threat from Obama’s friends at the UN who want to impose a global tax on all citizens in all nations to support its radical agenda - of sustainability and wealth redistribution..
    Obama’s Second Term Plan: Let The U.N. Tax Americans
    By DICK MORRIS
    It should come as no surprise that President Obama will raise taxes if he is re-elected. But here’s the shocker: He will invite the United Nations to tax Americans directly. And the proceeds would go directly to the Third World. In this way, Barack Hussein Obama will, indeed, realize the dreams of his father.
    In our new book, Here Come the Black Helicopters: UN Global Governance and the Loss of Freedom, Eileen and I describe how there is now pending in the U.N. all kinds of plans to tax Americans and redistribute their wealth - not to other Americans - but to other countries. These taxes will not be like our U.N. dues paid by a vote of our Congress. Nor akin to foreign aid which we choose to give. They would be mandatory levies imposed by treaty on American citizens. And, since they would be enumerated in a Treaty—not an act of Congress—only the president and the Democratic Senate need be on board. The Republican House has no role in the Treaty-making process.
    (Of course, we do not believe that actual black UN helicopters will land in our midst to take over our country. But we use the symbolism to warn that the liberal, bureaucratic elites in the UN, enabled by Obama and Hillary, mean to create global governance to override American self-rule and independence).
    Here is what we say in Black Helicopters that Obama, Hillary, and the UN are planning for us:
    •A “Robin Hood” tax on financial transactions. Every time you buy or sell a stock or a bond or exchange money while traveling, you’d be hit with a financial transactions tax (a percentage of your transaction) that would go to the UN.
    •A global tobacco tax with the funds to flow to the World Health Organization (WHO).
    •A UN-imposed tax on billionaires all over the world. And don’t delude yourself for a moment that it is only the 1600 current billionaires who will be hit. Once the precedent of a UN tax on US citizens is approved, it will gradually grow downwards to cover more and more Americans. Again the funds will go to the UN.
    •Under the Law of the Sea Treaty - up for Senate ratification in December of the lame duck session - offshore oil and gas wells would have to pay a proportion of their revenues to the International Seabed Authority, a UN-sponsored organization, which would distribute the loot to the third world.
    •A carbon tax on all U.S. or other foreign commercial or passenger aircraft flying to Europe. Nominally to fight climate change, these revenues would also go to the third world.
    •A mandatory assessment to be imposed on the U.S. to compensate third world nations for the costs of reducing their carbon output.
    These taxes are, of course, only the first steps. Once the principle is established of UN taxation of American citizens, the sky is the limit.
    Is there any organization less worthy of our trust to spend our money wisely than the United Nations? Beset by almost constant scandal, bereft of any in-house oversight or even audit, the UN is one of the most corrupt of all international organizations. In Black Helicopters, we document how pervasive this corruption really is.
    And where would the money go? To so-called less developed countries. The taxes are part of a global plan of redistribution of wealth from the Northern Hemisphere (US, Europe, Japan) to the Southern Hemisphere (Latin America, Africa, and South Asia).
    But don’t think that this flow of wealth will reduce poverty. Foreign aid doesn’t work. We explain in Black Helicopters that it really just puts a pot of money on the table in third world countries that automatically goes to whoever controls the presidential palace. Coups, civil wars, revolutions, and all sorts of violence usually ensue as various factions, tribes, or ethnic groups try to get their hands on the money. Real reduction in poverty can come only through foreign direct investment and trade, not via massive exports of northern hemisphere wealth to countries controlled by corrupt oligarchs.
    Even a victory in the election of 2012 may avert the threat of rampant globalism. Obama and his lame duck Senate will sign and try to ratify a broad range of global treaties to give away our sovereignty and expose us to UN taxation.
    Here Come the Black Helicopters: UN Global Governance and the Loss of Freedom is a clarion warning call and a guide to saving our freedom while we still can!
    -----------
    We need to kick the UN out of the US and convert the complex into low income housing.


    Oct 06, 2012
    Must see special - exposing Obama’s and the EPA’s Real Agenda
    By Drew Zahn
    The national spotlight is about to be shined on charges that the Obama administration is using Environmental Protection Agency regulations to exact its political and not necessarily environmental agenda on America.
    A Fox News report called “Behind Obama’s Green Agenda” will air Sunday evening at 8:00 p.m. Central, 9:00 Eastern, discussing charges by many in and out of government that the EPA has overstepped its bounds to become a strong arm for Obama’s political goals.
    Sources at Fox News told WND that many are charging Obama’s “doctrine of sustainable development” means a lot more than just “going green” and recycling garbage, but rather means using regulatory schemes to fight racism, promote homosexuality, restrict growth and farming and achieve socioeconomic goals that have nothing to do with the environment.
    The documentary will include views from several sources, including former EPA administrators, academics, Sen. David Vitter, R-La., and Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., author of “The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.”
    One of the Obama EPA’s most vocal critics, Inhofe contends power brokers in an ever-expanding federal government have been using the global-warming, climate-change issue in an effort to dramatically and hugely increase government regulation of American lives and businesses, necessarily raising the cost of living and taxes to achieve political ends.
    “The Greatest Hoax” claims to reveal the reasons behind those perpetuating the global warming myth, who is benefiting from the general acceptance of it and why the premise behind man-made climate change is blatantly and categorically false.

    Sources at Fox News tell WND Inhofe will be a major voice in the documentary and will discuss a range of issues, including the Keystone Pipeline and the behavior of EPA Regional Administrator Al Armendariz, who notoriously explained his “philosophy of enforcement” in regulating violators was to “crucify them.”
    The administration in their campaign claims to be all about the middle class yet proposes if victorious to institute a carbon tax in a second term. This is estimated to increase the gasoline price by $3 to $7 the target set by energy secretary Chu in his first term. Obama plans to institute his green agenda, even though it has failed miserably in Europe with heavy investment in wind and solar.
    Wind has been around since the 80s, the 1880s and solar the 90s, the 1890s. Had they been cost effective they would be a bigger part of the energy mix as President Carter pushed for. Still only 2% of our needs come from wind and solar. WHY?
    They found out in Europe where they heavily subsidized both that both are undependable and extremely costly. The sun doesn’t always shine, the wind doesn’t always blow.
    Energy costs skyrocketed, and companies shut down or relocated factories overseas. Spain lost 2.2 real jobs for every green job created and only 1 in 10 green jobs was permanent. Spain has an unemployment rate of 25.5% and they stopped the subsidies. Italy lost 3.4 jobs for every green job created
    Denmark, the top wind country has the highest energy costs of any country in Europe.
    Britain found wind was undependable delivering only 0.5% of their electricity needs during December 2010, the second coldest December since 1659 in the Little Ice Age. Over 25 of the population is in energy poverty in Wales, having to choose between and heating and eating. Prices are forecast to double again if the EU enviro agenda is followed.
    Carbon taxes failed in Europe and Australia. They would drive gasoline prices up an additional $3 to $4 a gallon here in the US and increase home heating and cooling costs by up to 75%, It would be a very regressive tax, affecting the low and middle class the most. Already here in the US, medium income for the middle class has declined 8% (over $4000) in Obama’s first term and gasoline prices have doubled and heating oil increased over 50% (propane not far behind). For a two car family with mileage efficient cars, the costs of driving is up $2400 already. Are you ready for an additional $4800? And if you think NATGAS can save us, remember the EPA is ready to go after fracking.

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  9. #9
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    Sep 30, 2012

    CO2 in Uk to cause electricity prices to double. Democrats look to do the same if they gain control
    The middle class has already been hit hard in the US with a decrease in median income of 8% in the Obama administration, a doubling of gasoline prices, large increases in energy prices and soon an increase in health care premiums. My insurance company has already warned us of an increase of 20-25% in 2013 with potentially less coverage if there is no change in the administration. There is talk behind the scenes in the democratic leadership and among some establishment republicans of some sort of carbon tax next year. They will claim it is only on energy companies and manufacturers, but of course that increased costs gets passed on to consumers and corporations and help spike prices for virtually all products and services. See how such a carbon tax in the UK is expected to double energy costs there.
    George Osborne’s CO2 tax will double UK electricity bills
    Theres a nasty shock in store for the British householder when a new ‘carbon’ tax comes into force.
    By Christopher Booker
    Fast approaching, if largely unnoticed, is yet another massive shock the Government has in store for us with its weirdly distorted energy policy. It is surprising to see what an abnormally high proportion of the electricity needed to keep our lights on has lately been coming from coal-fired power stations. Last Wednesday evening, for instance, this was over 50 per cent, with only 1.3 per cent coming from wind power. Yet by next March, we learn, five of our largest coal-fired plants, capable of supplying a fifth of our average power needs, are to be shut down, much earlier than expected, under an EU anti-pollution directive.
    One reason why these plants are being hammered through their remaining quota of hours allowed by the EU is that a new UK tax comes into force next April, which aims to make fossil-fuel power significantly more expensive. In 2010, George Osborne announced his intention to impose, from April 2013, a “carbon floor price” of 16 pounds on every tonne of CO2 emitted by British industry, rising to 30 a tonne by 2020 and 70 a tonne by 2030.
    An explicit purpose of this tax is to make the cost of electricity from fossil fuels so uncompetitive compared with “renewables” that it will, in the Treasury’s words, “drive 30‑40 billion pounds” of investment into “low carbon” sources such as wind and nuclear. On paper, the effect of Osborne’s new tax on our electricity bills looks devastating.
    Using the latest figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), our power plants burnt 40 million tonnes of coal in 2011, emitting 116 million tonnes of CO2. They also generated 175,000 gigawatt hours from gas, at just over half a tonne of CO2 per gigawatt. At 16 a tonne, this CO2 would cost 3.5 billion - on top of our total current wholesale electricity cost of some 19 billion. Thus the new impost would represent nearly 20 per cent added to our electricity bills next year, and would almost double them by 2030.
    Some of this, however, we already pay through the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS), which counts towards our 16 floor price.

    Osborne’s calculation in 2010 was that, initially, we would have to chip in less than an additional 2 pounds per tonne to make up the 16 price. (The ETS price at that time was predicted to continue rising towards 40.) Since then, however, with falling demand due to the EU’s recession, the price of EU carbon permits has fallen dramatically. To reach the initial 16 level, the Treasury says we will now have to pay nearly another 5, making our electricity significantly more expensive. But since it made that guess the EU price has slipped still further, to well under 6, leaving a gap of 10 a tonne to be made up by Osborne’s tax, rapidly rising every year thereafter.
    Thus, to meet that tax level in the years after 2013, we in Britain will have to pay electricity bills soaring to a level far higher than any others in Europe. All this is to promote the building of thousands more heavily subsidised windmills, which will in turn require us to build more gas-fired power stations to provide back-up for the constant fluctuations in wind speed. And these will be paying Mr Osborne’s fast-rising tax on all the CO2 they emit, with the bill to be picked up by the rest of us on a scale which, within 18 years, could alone almost double the cost of our electricity.
    In short, the Treasury has made an incredibly damaging miscalculation. Even if there is little chance that our Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Ed Davey, could get his head round such lunacy, perhaps someone might lay out for Mr Osborne the bill that his delusional new tax is going to land us all with.



    Sep 25, 2012
    On the Record High Sea Surface Temperatures for the Northeast Continental Shelf
    Bob Tisdale
    Joe D’Aleo of IceCap and WeatherBell asked me to take a look at the September 18, 2012 NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center press release Sea Surface Temperatures Reach Record Highs on Northeast Continental Shelf.
    While the press release does not state that the warming was caused by man, that doesn’t stop the comical comments by alarmists on the threads of blog posts at websites like ThinkProgress.
    Note to alarmist bloggers at ThinkProgress: The NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center forgot to tell you something. Global sea surface temperatures have warmed. There’s no question about that- However-There is no evidence of an anthropogenic component in the sea surface temperature records for the past 30 years. More on that later.
    The press release includes the typical coulda statement (my boldface):
    “A pronounced warming event occurred on the Northeast Shelf this spring, and this will have a profound impact throughout the ecosystem,” said Kevin Friedland, a scientist in the NEFSC’s Ecosystem Assessment Program. “Changes in ocean temperatures and the timing of the spring plankton bloom could affect the biological clocks of many marine species, which spawn at specific times of the year based on environmental cues like water temperature.”
    In other words, he doesn’t know, so he’s elected to speculate - which is a fancy-schmancy synonym for guess.
    Of interest to me was the claim in the press release:
    Friedland said the average sea surface temperature (SST) exceeded 10.5 degrees C (51F) during the first half of 2012, exceeding the previous record high in 1951. Average SST has typically been lower than 9 degrees C (48F) over the past three decades. Sea surface temperature in the region is based on both contemporary satellite remote-sensing data and long-term ship-board measurements, with historical SST conditions based on ship-board measurements dating back to 1854.
    Whenever I see a statement like that in a press release, without a graph to support it, I wonder what are they’re trying to hide. That is, if there really was something awful, they’d show it. We don’t need to do a complex evaluation, catching the exact coordinates of the shelf, from North Carolina northward. All we have to do is look at a big chunk of data to get an idea of what they’re not showing.
    The start date of 1854 indicates the referenced sea surface temperature dataset is NOAA’s ERSST.v3b. So let’s take a look at the data since then for a major portion of the Northeast Continental Shelf to see what the NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center isn’t telling us. We’ll use the coordinates of 40N-45N, 75W-65W. The area excludes the more southern “skinny” portions of the Northeast Continental Shelf, from Cape Hatteras to New Jersey, but these coordinates capture the big block of the shelf, including the area of greater concentrations of biomass from the map they provided, which I’ve annotated in Figure 1.

    (Note: The press release says to “Click on photo to launch Atlantic cod distribution slide show”. I’ve clicked and haven’t gotten a slide show.)
    First, the claim that the first 6 months of 2012 set a new record, just surpassing the previous record high in 1951:

    Figure 2 illustrates the average January to June sea surface temperatures for the Northeast Continental Shelf, from 1854 to 2012. I’ve also included the 2012 value as a horizontal line to make it easy to see if 2012 was in fact warmest. The 2012 value was warm, but the value in 1951 was slightly higher. However, I am not using the entire shelf shown in the NOAA map, so we should expect some minor differences. I know what some readers are thinking: the Northeast Fisheries Science Center simply extended data farther south along the coast until they found the coordinates then needed to make their claim. That could be true. But it’s not worth the time to verify.

    The monthly sea surface temperature anomalies for the region from January 1854 to August 2012 are shown in Figure 3. Looking at anomalies, we can see that the peak 2012 value was met or exceeded three times in the past, in the late-1940s and early-1950s. This is clearer in Figure 4 which excludes the data before the 1940s. The 2012 high value in Figure 4 certainly doesn’t look very alarming - just another warm month. Or you might think: why was it so cool for the other decades in between the early 1950s and now? Nope, they definitely would not have presented a graph like Figure 4.

    The next illustration, Figure 5, is a comparison of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), determined using ERSST.v3b data, and detrended sea surface temperatures for the Northeast Continental Shelf. Detrending is the same process used to determine the AMO index. Both datasets have been smoothed with 121-month running-average filters like the AMO index. Instead of the 60- to 65-year “cycle” in the AMO data, the detrended and smoothed Northeast Continental Shelf shows a more complex mode of decadal variability that is not in synch with the basin. If the alternating large and small amplitude variations were to continue, we should be expecting another large amplitude “cycle” next. Note: I began the last sentence with “If”.

    In other words, if the next cycle is of the larger amplitude, then in years to come, we should expect to see more notices of record high sea surface temperatures on the Northeast Continental Shelf from the NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center.
    A NOTE ABOUT THE CLAIMS OF HIGH TEMPERATURES AT DEPTH
    Parts of the press release also included statements about record high temperatures at depth. For example:
    Ocean bottom temperature data cited in the advisory posted today came from a variety of sources, including eMOLT, a cooperative research program between the Northeast Fisheries Science Center and lobstermen who deploy temperature probes attached to lobster traps. While some of the temperature probes from the eMOLT program are still in the water and have not yet been returned, those that have been returned indicate that bottom water temperatures in 2012 were the warmest since the eMOLT program began in 2001.
    What the press release fails to tell you is what causes the water temperatures to warm suddenly at depth - or as they called it earlier in the press release: “a pronounced warming event”.
    The Gulf Stream is the western boundary current portion of the North Atlantic gyre. The North Atlantic gyre is driven by the east-to-west trade winds in the tropics and the Westerlies (west-to-east winds) at mid-latitudes. The sun warms the water in the tropics, and it is carried poleward by the Gulf Stream so that it can be radiated into space easier at higher latitudes. The cooled water returns to the tropics by the eastern boundary current along the west coast of Africa.
    If the trade winds were to increase in the tropics, and if the Westerlies did not increase in strength proportionally at mid-latitudes, then the warm water that’s carried north by the Gulf Stream would “stack up” or pool along the east coast of the United States. The same thing would happen if the Westerlies were to slow at mid-latitudes, while the trade winds in the tropics remained constant. In other words, weather can cause “a pronounced warming event.”
    Ocean Heat Content is a dataset that includes the measured temperature of the oceans to depths of 700 meters (about 2300 feet), but they also include salinity in that dataset because the heat content is also affected by how much salt the water contains. The units are therefore in Gigajoules per square meter and not temperature.
    The long-term warming of ocean heat content can be impacted by prolonged and short-term changes in weather. To show the best example of this, we need to switch to North Pacific Ocean Heat Content data. The North Pacific like the ocean basins in each hemisphere has a gyre. The western boundary current there is called the Kuroshio Current, and the California Current is the eastern boundary current. The same basic process is involved: sun-warmed ocean water from the tropics is carried north by the Kuroshio Current so it can be radiated to space.

    Figure 6 shows the Ocean Heat Content of the North Pacific, north of 20N, from 1955 to present. Notice how, from 1955 to 1988, North Pacific Ocean Heat content cooled - not warmed. Then it warmed in a major step increase over a 2-year period. Without that step increase, North Pacific Ocean Heat Content would have cooled from 1955 to present.
    A note on the graph says “Most Of The Warming Took Place In 2 Years, With A Change In Sea Level Pressure”. To some that may seem confusing. They think: how could a change in sea level pressure cause Ocean Heat Content to rise? An AGW-proponent actually called me a clown recently for stating that the rise in Ocean Heat Content was caused by a change in sea level pressure. That blogger failed to realize the change in sea level pressure reflected a change in the wind patterns of the North Pacific. And that’s the basis for my earlier discussion of changes in the strengths of westerlies and trade winds.
    I find it amazing that anthropogenic global warming proponents can’t see the significance of Figure 6. To them only greenhouse gases can warm the oceans. In the real world, Mother Nature simply throws a switch for a few years and presto, a warmer North Pacific.
    THERE IS NO EVIDENCE OF AN ANTHROPOGENIC COMPONENT IN THE SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE RECORDS FOR THE PAST 30 YEARS
    I made the above statement earlier in this post. For more than 3 ½ years, I have been illustrating and discussing that fact here at Climate Observations. The two most recent posts on the subject were A Blog Memo to Kevin Trenberth of NCAR and How Much of an Impact Does the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation Have on Arctic Sea Ice Extent? They were also cross posted at WattsUpWithThat here and here.
    To carry the discussion further and make it easier to understand for people without technical backgrounds, I’ve recently published an e-book (pdf) about the phenomena called El Nino and La Nina and its long-term effects. It’s titled Who Turned on the Heat? with the subtitle The Unsuspected Global Warming Culprit, El Nino Southern Oscillation.
    The book is intended for persons (with or without technical backgrounds) interested in learning about El Nino and La Nina events and in understanding the natural causes of the warming of our global oceans for the past 30 years. Because land surface air temperatures simply exaggerate the natural warming of the global oceans over annual and multidecadal time periods, the vast majority of the warming taking place on land is natural as well. The book is the product of years of research of the satellite-era sea surface temperature data that’s available to the public via the internet. It presents how the data accounts for its warming - and there are no indications the warming was caused by manmade greenhouse gases. None at all. The book also includes a discussion of the natural warming of Ocean Heat Content data. In fact, Figure 6 above is Figure 5-55 from Who Turned on the Heat?
    Who Turned on the Heat? was introduced in the blog post Everything You Every Wanted to Know about El Nino and La Nina...Well Just about Everything. The Updated Free Previewincludes the Table of Contents; the Introduction; the beginning of Section 1, with the cartoon-like illustrations; the discussion About the Cover; and the Closing.


    Sep 20, 2012
    The Real Arctic and Antarctic Story
    By Joe D’Aleo
    UPDATE: Jeff Masters of the Weather Underground says the water off Antarctica is warming faster than any place on earth. Check out this NOAA SSTA map. Dream on Jeff. He is now where he belongs - The Weather Channel.

    Enlarged

    We hear a constant hyping of the new low arctic ice record and the ignoring of the simultaneous increase of Antarctic ice which appears heading towards a near new record high.
    To these so called scientists and the media, the world began in 1979 when satellite tracking began, The famous picture of the submarine Skate surfacing at the North Pole in August 1959 shows this has happened before.


    Steve Goddard over at Real Science many such examples of distress by scientists and the media about loss of arctic ice in the first half of the 1900s here and here.

    The last arctic minimum in 2007 coincided with the southern hemisphere record high, which never was acknowledged. Here is today’s Southern Hemisphere ice anomaly chart.


    Also note a new paper finds Antarctic Peninsula has accumulated significant extra ice since 1850
    A paper published in Geophysical Research Letters finds the Antarctic Peninsula has experienced a “significant accumulation” of “up to 45 meters of extra ice thickness over the past 155 years.” This finding is contrary to the claims of the highly-flawed study published by RealClimate’s Dr. Eric Steig, which alleged that the Antarctic Peninsula is rapidly warming. The finding is particularly surprising since the “significant accumulation” of ice has occurred since the end of the Little Ice Age in ~ 1850.
    Increased ice loading in the Antarctic Peninsula since the 1850s and its effect on Glacial Isostatic Adjustment
    Key Points
    - Accumulation increase results in up to 45 m extra ice thickness over 155 years
    - Model predicts GIA-related subsidence of up to 7 mm/yr which will affect GPS
    - GRACE-derived rates of ice-mass change are biased low by ignoring this signal
    Authors: Grace A. Alexandra Nield, Pippa L. L Whitehous, Matt A. A King, Peter J. J Clarke, Michael J. J Bentley

    ARCTIC ICE
    On October 21st in 2011, the Associated Press hit the wires with a story entitled “Sea Ice Melting as Arctic Temperatures Rise.” This summer, numerous stories have appeared in newspapers and magazines about this year’s record. Part of this related to the arctic storm which broke up the ice.


    The stories inevitably talked about the threat to the polar bears and some even penguins. Here they are photo shopped together although penguins are not found at the North Pole or polar bears Antarctica (for which the penguins are grateful because they would not exist if they did).

    The temperatures in the arctic have indeed risen in recent years and ice has declined, bottoming out in 2007 but it is not unprecedented or unexpected. The arctic temperatures and arctic ice extent varies in a very predictable 60-70 year cycle that relates to ocean cycles which are likely driven by solar changes.
    In 2007, NASA scientists reported that after years of research, their team had assembled data showing that normal, decade-long changes in Arctic Ocean currents driven by a circulation known as the Arctic Oscillation was largely responsible for the major Arctic climate shifts observed over the past several years. These periodic reversals in the ocean currents move warmer and cooler water around to new places, greatly affecting the climate. The AO was at a record low level last winter explaining the record cold and snow in middle latitudes. A strongly negative AO pushes the coldest air well south while temperatures in the polar regions are warmer than normal under blocking high pressure. See post here.
    We agree. And indeed both oceans play a role. In the record-setting (since satellite monitoring began in 1979) summer melt season of 2007, NSIDC noted the importance of both oceans in the arctic ice.
    “One prominent researcher, Igor Polyakov at the University of Fairbanks, Alaska, points out that pulses of unusually warm water have been entering the Arctic Ocean from the Atlantic, which several years later are seen in the ocean north of Siberia. These pulses of water are helping to heat the upper Arctic Ocean, contributing to summer ice melt and helping to reduce winter ice growth.
    Another scientist, Koji Shimada of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, reports evidence of changes in ocean circulation in the Pacific side of the Arctic Ocean. Through a complex interaction with declining sea ice, warm water entering the Arctic Ocean through Bering Strait in summer is being shunted from the Alaskan coast into the Arctic Ocean, where it fosters further ice loss. Many questions still remain to be answered, but these changes in ocean circulation may be important keys for understanding the observed loss of Arctic sea ice.”

    Read MUCH more here.

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  10. #10
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    Sep 17, 2012

    Global warming to produce new ice age
    By P Gosselin on 17. September 2012

    Climate science is hopelessly confused. A few years ago we were told to expect more hurricanes, but have since gotten almost none. We were told we would get winters without snow, instead we’re now getting hit by bitter cold, snowy winters. We were told to expect an Arctic melt down, and now they are telling us to expext a new ice age.

    German NTV public television to broadcast “Der Super-Frost”, asks if global warming will cause and ice age!
    Is it any wonder that nobody believes climate scientists anymore?
    This week German NTV public television is broadcasting a show titled “Der Super Frost” - scheduled to air Wednesday evening at 11 p.m. CET. Hat-tip to Die kalte Sonne website. “Der Super Frost” just happens to be the Mega Freeze episode of the US Mega Disasters series from 2006 (see trailer below).

    In the trailer, they ask if global warming will lead to a tipping to global freezing, in which case we would have to call it global cooling – which in reality climate scientists say is now global warming.

    This show isn’t just some outdated theory from 2006. Once again today the notion that warming will lead to an ice age is coming back. For example last week German daily Bild here (and a host of other German media outlets) carried the story from scientist Jennifer Francis of Rutgers-University. Bild opened with:

    In the Arctic it is getting warmer and warmer, the ice sheet covering the sea has reached a record minimum. Scientists fear that the winter in North America and Europe will therefore become extremely icy! Meaning: The Arctic sea is releasing more and more heat into the air – and this delivers frigid cold!
    Wow! warming produces extreme cold. It really does, the scientists say. So should we be preparing for a bitter cold winter? Well, not really. You see Bild reports that these Francis added an opt-out provision to cover her tush:
    However, many factors play a role, like snow cover in Siberia or also tropical influences. Thus despite less sea ice coverage, sometimes also mild and wet winters may remain - like last year. Climate scientist Francis: ‘I can only say that it will probably be a very interesting winter.’”
    If that’s all you can say, then why did you tell us the rest? Is it because now, no matter what happens, you and the rest of the charlatans will be able to say your models predicted it?
    If their idiotic hypothesis that a warm Arctic produces a cold northern hemisphere were true, then the opposite would have to be true. That is, when there’s lots of sea ice, as was the case 35 years ago, then North American and European winters would have to be very mild. That was not the case.
    As climatologist Pat Michaels says, the hypothesis is horseshit.


    Sep 17, 2012
    The president decides to stick with climatism
    Steve Goreham, TBO
    President Obama’s remarks to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, he stated, “… My plan will continue to reduce the carbon pollution that is heating our planet - because climate change is not a hoax. More droughts and floods and wildfires are not a joke. They’re a threat to our children’s future. And in this election you can do something about it.”
    The president’s remarks support the ideology of climatism - the belief that manmade greenhouse gases are destroying Earth’s climate.
    Today, the world is in the grip of the madness of climatism. Our president and 191 other world leaders of the United Nations continue to pursue futile policies to stop global warming. Universities preach “sustainable development.” Companies tout their “green” programs. Schools teach our children that if we change light bulbs, we can save polar bears. But an increasing body of science shows that the theory of catastrophic manmade warming is nonsense. Climate change is natural, and car emissions are insignificant.
    The president did not mention the Keystone Pipeline in his speech. In January 2012, he halted the $7 billion Keystone project on recommendation by the State Department in order to assess potential environmental harm. During the last months of 2011, thousands of protesters gathered in front of the White House to protest the Keystone project. They claimed that the oil the pipeline would transport from Canadian tar sands would cause irreversible global warming. Dr. James Hansen of NASA was one of those arrested at the demonstrations. Media pundits speculated that the president halted the pipeline to strengthen his political support with environmental groups. But could it be that Mr. Obama believes that halting the pipeline was the right policy to save the planet?
    Who can blame the president for sticking with the theory of man-made global warming? Most of his leading advisors, including Environmental Protection Agency head Lisa Jackson, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, science guru John Holdren and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, warn that mankind is destroying the climate. The EPA campaign to halt CO2 emissions from power plants, new vehicle mileage standards, subsidies for wind turbines and electric cars, the Solyndra solar cell debacle, the banning of incandescent light bulbs, the looming California high-speed rail boondoggle and ethanol vehicle fuel mandates are all policies driven by climatism.
    The president’s use of the term “carbon pollution” is disappointing. Environmentalists inaccurately use this phrase to conjure up images of billowing smoke stacks, and the president has picked this up. The theory of manmade global warming claims that carbon dioxide, not carbon, causes climate change. Carbon dioxide is an invisible gas, while carbon is a black solid. Referring to carbon dioxide as “carbon” is as foolish as calling water “hydrogen” or salt “chlorine.”
    Compounds have totally different properties than their composing elements. Neither is carbon dioxide pollution. It’s an odorless, harmless gas that green plants need for photosynthesis. Carbon dioxide is a foundation for life on Earth along with oxygen and water.
    Carbon dioxide is a trace gas. Only four of every 10,000 air molecules are CO2. It’s estimated that the amount of carbon dioxide that mankind added in all of human history is only a fraction of one of these four molecules. The idea that mankind’s tiny contribution to a trace atmospheric gas can cause hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods and wildfires is not a joke, it’s incredible.
    Contrary to much of the recent press, a look at history shows that this summer’s drought was not unprecedented in these United States. The droughts of the 1930s and 1950s lasted longer and experienced higher temperatures. According to the State Climate Extremes Database of the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), 37 of the 50 state high-temperature records dated prior to 1960, with 22 of these from the decade of the 1930s. Only one state high-temperature record was recorded during the last 16 years. Additional data on droughts and floods from the NCDC show no increasing trend over the last 100 years. Nature drives droughts and floods, not manmade emissions of carbon dioxide.
    The president’s statement is remarkable in another way. He implies that we should vote for him because he can control droughts, floods and wildfires to safeguard “our children’s future.”
    During a speech in June 2008, he implied that he could slow the rise of the seas. What’s next, regulation of snowfall? If Mr. Obama is re-elected and with bipartisan support in Congress and approval of the United Nations, look for the Snowfall Abatement Act of 2014.
    Steve Goreham is executive director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the new book “The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.”


    Sep 12, 2012
    Government of, by and for the EPA
    Source: SPPI
    EPA Madness Spreads
    EPA advances anti-energy agenda, with little regard for Americans health or welfare

    by Paul Driessen
    Seven score and nine years ago, President Lincoln resolved to take increased devotion to ensuring that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the Earth.
    Yet, today, our lives are determined not so much by We the People, as by a distant central government, particularly increasingly powerful, unelected and unaccountable Executive Branch agencies. Foremost among them, by almost any standard, is the Environmental Protection Agency.
    Under Administrator Lisa Jackson, the Gettysburg vision has mutated into government of, by and for the EPA. Indeed, Ms. Jackson seeks not merely to regulate, but to legislate; not merely to protect our health and environment against every conceivable risk, but to control every facet of our economy, livelihoods and lives. Under her direction, EPA increasingly flaunts the naked power of regulators gone wild.
    Instead of following laws and policies set by our elected representatives, EPA is now controlled by environmental ideologues, determined to impose their utopian ideas, via a massive and arrogant power grab. President Obama set the tone, with his promises to “bankrupt” coal and utility companies and “radically transform” our economy and society, and serves as the rogue agency’s cheerleader-in-chief. With few exceptions, our courts have refused to intervene, and the Senate has obstructed any meaningful efforts to constrain agency overreach or reexamine the laws under which it claims jurisdiction.
    EPA’s power grab picks the pockets of every American business and citizen, making it increasingly expensive to fill gas tanks, heat and cool homes and offices, run hospitals and factories, or buy food and consumer goods. The Employment Prevention Agency’s $100-billion diktats are killing countless jobs, making America more dependent on foreign sources of energy and raw materials that we have in abundance right here at home, and endangering our economic health and national security.
    Under Lisa Jackson’s agenda, fossil fuels are to be relegated to the dustbin of history. America is to get its energy from intermittent, unreliable “renewable” sources, whenever they are available. Regulations on carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases,” mercury, soot and other substances are to make non-hydrocarbon energy appear cheaper by comparison, and pave the way for crony corporatist “alternatives” like wind, solar, ethanol, wave and tidal action, and even biofuel for the Navy and Air Force.
    In a mere six instances, our courts have delayed or blocked some of EPA’s worst excesses. Ruling that the agency had exceeded its authority, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia struck down EPA’s “cross-state” air pollution rule, which would have controlled power plant emissions on the ground that computer models predicted the pollutants might harm neighborhoods hundreds of miles away.
    In far too many other cases, however, EPA has been given carte blanche to regulate as it sees fit. A key pretext is the 1970 Clean Air Act, as amended by Congress in 1977 and 1990. The act deals primarily with six common pollutants: sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides, particulates (soot), ozone, lead and carbon monoxide. It never mentions carbon dioxide, the plant-fertilizing gas that is essential for all life.
    As EPA itself acknowledges, between 1970 and 2010, those six “criteria” air pollutants declined by an average of 63% and will continue to do so under existing regulations and technologies. Moreover, those dramatic reductions occurred even ascoal-based electricity generation increased 180% ... overall US energy consumption rose 40%… miles traveled soared 168% ...and the nation’s population increased by 110 million. However, EPA intends to go much further, to advance its radical agenda.
    It ruled that carbon dioxide is a “pollutant,” ignoring solar influences and citing claims by alarmists like James Hansen and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that this essential gas (0.0395% of Earth’s atmosphere) “contributes” to “dangerous” global warming. Since hydrocarbons provide 85% of the energy used to power America, this single ruling gives EPA effective control over our transportation, manufacturing, heating, cooling and other activities. virtually our entire economy. while making it all but impossible to operate existing coal-fired power plants or build new ones.
    To ensure that coal really is excised from our energy mix, EPA also issued oppressive new rules on other emissions. Its new mercury rule is based on computer-generated risks to hypothetical American women who eat 296 pounds of fish a year that they catch themselves, its determination to prevent a theoretical reduction in IQ test scores by “0.00209 points,” and its refusal to recognize that coal fired power plants contribute just 3% of the total mercury deposited in American watersheds, and thus in fish tissue.
    EPA’s new PM2.5 soot standard is equivalent to having one ounce of super fine dust spread equally in a volume of air one half mile long, one half mile wide and one story tall while other rules demand that water from coal mines be cleaner than Perrier bottled water!
    The agency repeatedly denied Shell Oil permits to drill in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska, because emissions from drilling rig and icebreaker engines might contribute to global warming. It opposes the Keystone XL Pipeline on the ground that burning Canadian oil sands fuel might likewise “contribute” to catastrophic climate change whereas that would presumably not be the case if China burned that same fuel.
    When Congress failed to act, it imposed new 54.5 mpg automobile standards that will make cars less affordable, but also smaller, more lightweight and less safe, causing thousands of additional injuries, disabilities and deaths every year. The agency bragged about fuel savings, and ignored the human toll.
    EPA also added industrial pollution, habitat destruction and fertilizer runoff as more reasons why irrigation water should not be turned on again in California’s San Joaquin Valley, to “protect” the delta smelt at the expense of farm jobs and families, after a judge ordered water to be turned back on.
    To further justify its despotic decisions, EPA grossly overstates the economic benefits of its rules insisting that each “premature death” theoretically avoided creates $9 million in hypothetical societal economic gains, whether the assumed “person” was a newborn or an 85 year old in hospice care.
    If even that isn’t enough, it uses human subjects in laboratory tests, exposing them to what Ms. Jackson has testified are dangerous, even toxic levels of fine soot. The agency also pays activist groups millions of taxpayer dollars a year to promote and applaud its farfetched claims and rogue actions.
    Finally, EPA ignores the clearly harmful impacts its regulations have on human health and welfare. The rules cost jobs, thereby increasing the risk of depression, alcohol abuse, spousal and child abuse, cardiovascular disease and suicide. They just as obviously raise the cost of food, electricity, heating, air conditioning, commuting, healthcare and other necessities, thereby reducing health, welfare, living standards, civil rights progress and environmental justice especially for poor, elderly and minority families.
    EPA is out of control, and thus far unaccountable for its abuses of power, its disinformation and fraud, and the harm it is inflicting for little or no health or environmental benefit.
    Our founding fathers provided for elections, so that the American people could choose leaders who make the major decisions affecting their lives and not be subjected to involuntary servitude at the hands of unelected, unaccountable kings or bureaucrats.
    Rarely in history has one election meant so much, or one agency asserted so much control over our lives, livelihoods and freedoms. The 2012 elections will determine whether America once again enjoys a new birth of freedom, or continues suffering under an EPA that enslaves and impoverishes us, rather than protects us.
    ____________

    Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT -) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power Black death.

    ICECAP

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