Keith's Journal

How many believers are left?

Andrew Bolt
Friday, July 18, 2008 at 06:50am



Another sceptic declares himself. Joining the increasing crowd is Professor Geoffrey Kearsley, a geographer developing a programme in environmental communication at the University of Otago:

"It may well be that human activity is indeed changing the climate, at least in part, but there is an increasing body of science that says that the sun may have a greater role.

"If it does have, then global warming is likely to stop, as it appears to have done since 1998, and if the current sunspot cycle fails to ignite, then cooling, possibly rapid and severe cooling, may eventuate. The next five years will tell us a great deal. In these circumstances, we should wait and see. "

UPDATE

A brilliant must-read article by David Evans on how the myth was made:

I DEVOTED six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office… It was great. We were working to save the planet.

But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming…

1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it…

2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None…

3. The satellites that measure the world’s temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980)…

Evans is particularly strong in describing how no one can detect what’s meant to be the signature of a man-made global warming - a “hot spot” about 10km above the tropics. But for politicians, this conclusion is particularly crucial:


What is going to happen over the next decade as global temperatures continue not to rise? The Labor Government is about to deliberately wreck the economy in order to reduce carbon emissions. If the reasons later turn out to be bogus, the electorate is not going to re-elect a Labor government for a long time. When it comes to light that the carbon scare was known to be bogus in 2008, the ALP is going to be regarded as criminally negligent or ideologically stupid for not having seen through it. And if the Liberals support the general thrust of their actions, they will be seen likewise.

This could be Kevin Rudd’s Khemlani moment. Labor could be a laughing stock for a generation. But only if the Liberals start distancing themselves from this utter insanity.

Full article

From the ABC report, you’d think the Arctic ice was melting faster than ever:

A group of Russian scientists are being rescued from a melting ice-floe in the Arctic.

Our Moscow correspondent, Scott Bevan, reports the 20 scientists have been based on the ice floe since September, conducting a range of experiments, including monitoring the effects of climate change.

The team was meant to be at the drifting station, known as North Pole 35, for a year. But the ice has been melting so quickly, that the floe’s shrunk to a little more than a tenth of its size of last September.

In fact, there is much more ice now at the North Pole than there was last year - a detail the ABC strangely forgot to mention:



(Source: US National Snow and Ice Data Center.)

(This graph shows that the ice this year is more than the same time last year, although somewhat below the long term average, but well above that predicted by "the models"- Keith)

I’m guessing that this fact will get only a fraction of the coverage that this scare received last month:

The distinct possibility that this summer—for the first time in recorded history—the North pole could be free of sea ice, is now a common subject of discussion among the world’s climate experts.

Once again I ask: if the evidence for a warming world, heated by man, is so clear, why the need to constantly exaggerate and cherrrypick?

UPDATE

Speaking of which, Professor Bjorn Lomborg notes:

Given all the warnings, here is a slightly inconvenient truth: over the past two years, the global sea level hasn’t increased. It has slightly decreased. Since 1992, satellites orbiting the planet have measured the global sea level every 10 days with an amazing degree of accuracy – 3-4mm. For two years, sea levels have declined. (All of the data are available at sealevel.colorado.edu.)...

Simply put, we’re being force-fed vastly over-hyped scare stories. Proclaiming six meters of sea-level rise over this century contradicts thousands of UN scientists, and requires the sea-level rise to accelerate roughly 40-fold from today. Imagine how climate alarmists would play up the story if we actually saw an increase in the sea-level rise.

Gore cools planet

Dr Roy Spencer, US Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite, updates his temperature graph:

When one takes into consideration that the cooling from the Mt. Pinatubo eruption and the warming from the 1997-98 El Nino event were not part of any underlying long-term trend, we can imagine that globally-averaged temperatures were flat from 1990 until 2000, then there was a brief warming until about 2002, after which temperatures have once again remained flat. Note that the longer temperatures remain flat the greater the warming that will be required to put us back ‘on track’ to match the climate model projections used by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The coming months and years should be interesting.

Gore Lied scribbles with a red pen on Spencer’s graph to show the famous Gore Effect at its most magnificent. Almost as soon as Gore released An Inconvenient Truth, warning of catastrophic warming, temperatures started to fall:




MEANWHILE, Professor Fred Singer notes the refusal of warmist Clive Hamilton to debate sceptics, and sends Australia a message about such cause-pushers:

As an atmospheric physicist, I deal with facts: many independent measurements published by recognized experts and the published results from some two dozen climate models run by scientists who have specialized in this subdiscipline. The IPCC and nearly all scientists also accept these same facts—although the measurements are never perfect and the model results are based on many assumptions.

All I claim is that the observations disagree significantly with these model results… (O)nce one accepts that the models don’t represent reality, then “all the rest is only commentary” —to quote a biblical sage.

It means that the human-caused greenhouse effect is much smaller than the models calculate—and not significant compared to natural factors that rule the climate and are beyond human control.

Of course, unlike Hamilton, Singer does understand the science.

An emerging truth

There is now unequivocal evidence that the temperature of the planet is dropping like a stone.

As the DailyTech site reports:
All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASAGISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously. A compiled list of all the sources can be seen...The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to wipe out most of the warming recorded over the past 100 years.

Here’s some other data you may not have seen. The troposphere hasn’t warmed for the past five years. And the oceans haven’t warmed for five years either, which has got this poor NPR reporter scratching his head, poor chap:

Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them. This is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record. But Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.

And here is Ross McKittrick (who exposed the fundamental flaw in the research underpinning the whole of MMGW theory, the hockey-stick curve whose upward warming trend was achieved by omitting several hundred years of global climate history) revealing that there is an error in groundstation measurements such that past warming as measured by near-surface air has been over-estimated by 100% for over 20 years to 2002 (since when there has been cooling). While at Climate Audit, John Goetz says that the temperature record for 2005-2007 has actually been falsified to produce an upward trend. Crumbs!

Now look at this curious development. The British government, as we know,has swallowed the predictions of man-made global warming and is busily trying to persuade us that it is committed to reducing carbon emissions to counter the threat that we’re all about to fry. Yet HM Treasury has posted on its website a paper about solar cycles, which says:

Based on solar maxima of approximately 50 for solar cycles 24 and 25, a global temperature decline of 1.5°C is predicted to 2020, equating to the experience of the Dalton Minimum.

And it also concludes:

A rural US temperature data set shows that recent and current temperatures remain below the average of the first half of the 20th century.

If the Treasury thinks it is worth putting up on its website a paper forecasting global cooling, why is the British government adopting policies, including green taxes and intrusive lifestyle prescriptiveness, to deal with precisely the opposite eventuality?

Central Asian cold snap continues to kill

Severe winter weather is engulfing Iran, central Asia and Afghanistan, with temperatures as low as minus 20 degrees Celsius.

Energy shortages in the region are making the situation more difficult.

A government agency in Kyrgyzstan said 50 homeless people froze to death over the first four days of the new year.

Heavy snow has also caused casualties and major disruptions in Afghanistan.

Five people were killed in an avalanche in the western province of Ghor and in neighbouring Herat, eight members of the same family died after their roof collapsed under heavy snow.

Heavy snow and plummeting temperatures in Iran have led to dramatic headlines over recent days, with eight people frozen to death after being trapped in their cars and some desert areas reporting snowfalls for the first time in living memory.

- BBC

Snow in the desert- how cool is that?