The Truth-Tellers Collective

There appears to be a group of reliable truth-tellers building, out there in Web Log Land. The YouTube at the top is from Peter Sinclair and his “Climate Denial Crock of the Week” series. Always worth watching. A calming breath of fresh sane air for the mind :-

http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610

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Slow-Moving Meltdown Catastrophe

The IPCC is out of date. No, really, the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report from the IPCC is now way out of date :-

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-02/ul-plr021710.php

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The World Warms Up

The United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center in their monthly “State of the Climate”, state :-

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/index.php

“Selected Global Highlights for January 2010 : The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for January 2010 was 0.60°C (1.08°F) above the 20th century average of 12.0°C (53.6°F). This is the fourth warmest January on record…”

How can this be ? The newspapers have been saying that Global Warming is just a confused scare story, or perhaps a tax-begging scam, or a bunch of self-important technologists on a gravy train creating false alarm to justify their funding streams – nothing to worry about. And of course, we can believe the mainstream Media implicitly. There are rules about the quality and accuracy of reporting.

Are NOAA sure they’ve checked that their thermometers are calibrated properly ? It all seems rather worrying that such a large American Science agency should be claiming that January 2010 was so warm when there has been all that snow and rain and ice about. The Media tried to point out this bad weather, but the scientists just carried on measuring high temperatures.

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The BBC : Relatively Scary

Take any subject you like, terrorism, bird flu, street crime, elder abuse, credit fraud, political corruption, and the BBC will give you a serious, in-depth and highly concerned feature article with professional photographs and solid headlines.

Everything, that is, apart from Global Warming.

Why is Climate Change so unscary for the BBC ?

Every other problem in the known universe is worthy of gravitas and graveyard intonation, but not Climate Change Science and the implications it has as risk to life, health, wealth and general contentment.

What could be going wrong ? Why the non-long faces when it comes to the most serious risks facing mankind since the Black Death ?

Why does Global Warming get “relativist” treatment when everything else gets the full shadowy-figure-in-a-cloak-with-a-scythe ?

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James Delingpole Trusts Known Obstructers

I think I might start using a new term : “Climate Obstructers”, people who make lots of challenges to the IPCC consensus, who have what seems to me to be an agenda to obstruct the course of Climate Change Science.

In his latest Web Log post, James Delingpole attracts attention to a “magisterial report” from Joseph D’Aleo (of web log ICECAP) and Anthony Watts (of web log WattsUpWithThat), which is actually a crock of shambolic fripperies, in my view :-

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100024023/global-warming-is-it-even-happening/
“Global Warming: is it even happening?”

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Send a Sceptic to Siberia

Yawn. Yet another anti-Science web log page floats into my field of vision. It’s so…boring, trying to keep up with the Global Warming Deniers. I can barely keep awake. Here’s an example of the trite, and frankly, petulant genre :-

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100023339/james-hansen-would-you-buy-a-used-temperature-data-set-from-this-man/

Actually, don’t bother reading it. It’s a waste of column inches.

If only the Climate Change Sceptics would just go away and let us get on with the gargantuan task of revitalising the Energy industry around sustainable technologies.

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The Blob Chart’s Back !

The NASA GISS Blob Chart has just been completed to finish off 2009, and it’s red, raw and angry. Don’t see any yellow in 2009, just orange and red. Getting kind of hot lately, isn’t it ?

The Blob Chart is…the best communications tool since the telephone, by the way. So simple. So visual. So colourful. So unambiguous.

Spikes & Slopes

by Jo Abbess
3 December 2009

One Hot Year

1998 was a very hot year. Worldwide, the land and sea surface temperatures spiked sharply upwards. Scientists said it was supposed to get hot, but not this hot. Yet by the year 2000, things had cooled back down again. In fact, they were a little cooler than 1995. [1] The detailed analysis made it seem like a murder mystery – who killed the heat ? What happened to Global Warming ?

Part of the forensic evidence came from analysis of Mount Pinatubo. On 15th June 1991, it experienced massive volcanic eruption causing an enormous plume in the sky, easily visible from space. [2] [3] The sulphur dioxide in the plume deflected the sun’s heating rays from Earth, and temperatures on the ground plummeted around the world. Yet, despite this cooling effect, land and sea surface temperatures were back to normal by around 1995, just in time for the sizzle of 1998. [4]

It seemed likely that spikes and slumps were just natural cycles; the climate systems moving from one stable pattern to another. For years, big loops of wind will rotate in one direction, and weathermen know what the temperatures and rainfall will look like. And then the whole setup will flip and change, and temperatures, rainfall and winds will all be different. [5]

Research showed that the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) created drought weather conditions in 1997, causing massive forest fires in Indonesia that helped drive up worldwide temperatures in 1998. [6]

A “nuclear winter” from the occasional volcanic eruption, or a “fry up” from flip-flops in big climate circulations only have a short-term impact on global temperatures. [7] The Climate is always changing. There are ups, and there are downs, but no permanent changes. Don’t believe the spikes.

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Another Hot Year

NASA GISS scientists have analysed their data and have found that 2009 was, on average, the second hottest on record.

Sea Level Propaganda

The Times of London has developed what looks like a Climate Change Denier streak of late, reinforcing anti-Science propaganda currently in circulation.

Here they are with what I consider to be an unhelpful treatment of a story about Professor Stefan Rahmstorf :-

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6982299.ece

“From The Sunday Times : January 10, 2010 : Climate change experts clash over sea-rise ‘apocalypse’ : Critics say an influential prediction of a 6ft rise in sea levels is flawed : Jonathan Leake : Professor Stefan Rahmstorf : Climate science faces a new controversy after the Met Office denounced research from the Copenhagen summit which suggested that global warming could raise sea levels by 6ft by 2100. The research, published by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, created headline news during the United Nations summit on climate change in Denmark last month…”

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Goldilocks and the Melting Arctic

It seems, sadly, that Richard Betts of the UK’s Met Office has fallen for the “Goldilocks Fallacy”. In attempting to dismiss what he sees as alarmist claims, yet prevent sceptics or deniers getting a toehold; trying to steer a safe, middle course on the truth of Global Warming in the Arctic, he appears to have misquoted the evidence :-

http://climateprogress.org/2010/01/12/sciencerichard-betts-andy-revkin-dramatic-decline-in-arctic-sea-ice-in-2007-was-not-reversed-in-2008-2009-recovery/

Fearmongering may not be the correct response to this patently serious change in the Arctic Sea Ice, in fact, social management should be avoided at all cost; but telling the truth should be paramount, even if that rocks boats.

NASA GISS : 2009 Second Warmest

According to James Hansen and the crew at NASA GISS, 2009 was the second warmest year ever. Yes, even though December 2009 was a bit nippy for some, the Arctic Oscillation couldn’t ruin a grand total of warm.

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The Burn Goes On

At the turn of every month, I check the websites of the agencies charged with collecting and analysing the available data on Global Warming, to find out what the latest position shows.

Some agencies update their online resources faster than others. For example, as of today, the Hadley Centre of the Meteorological Office has produced a summary of the Central England Temperature (HadCET, or CET) for both December 2009 and the whole of 2009 :-

http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/cet_info_mean2009.html

And so has the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – finally :-

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global&year=2009&month=13&submitted=Get+Report

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Extreme Weather : Global Warming style

“You still get cold days…People say ‘what’s happened to Global Warming ?’…that’s just the weather”, says Gerald Meehl.

The Spectator’s Rod Liddle Fabricates

http://www.spectator.co.uk/rodliddle/5688478/questioning-the-climate-change-establishment.thtml

“Questioning the Climate Change Establishment : ROD LIDDLE : THURSDAY, 7TH JANUARY 2010 : So, this is now the coldest winter for thirty years and the snow is likely to hang around for two weeks, maybe three. How does this square with last year’s prediction from eminent scientists – the Met, the UAE change-the-numbers-monkeys, Marcus Brigstocke etc – that 2010 was going to be the hottest year on record? It could still be, of course – but it will have to go it some. Let’s keep an eye on the figures – so far, coldest for thirty years, remember. December was cold too, if you remember – yet apparently not included in the figures for 2009 which, if you recall, were jubilantly announced as being the fifth hottest since records began in the middle of November – ie when there was still 11 per cent of the year to go, the coldest bit…”

You’re entirely mistaken, Rodney.

All the data from 2009 for the Central England Temperarture, for example, was used in the calculation of the yearly mean. And all the data is available on the Hadley Centre website, and pictures too :-

http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/cet_info_mean2009.html

http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/data/download.html

It’s true that NASA GISS and NOAA are a bit slow in publishing their data and charts, but in a short week or so, they’ll be posted.

Please check your facts before splurging. And that means all of you, respectable authentic journalists, opinion-formers and shock jocks alike.

James Hansen : More Right Than Wrong

You know, back in 1988, James Hansen had some fairly basic FORTRAN computing code and an embarrassingly uncomplex model of the World Ocean, and yet he still came up with shockingly accurate projections of Global Warming.

The data is in. The models were right (more or less).

Gore Was Mostly Right

Al Gore speak at the December 2009 Climate Talks in Copenhagen this week, and you would not believe how he got mauled by the Media and the Denier-Sceptics. Watch and listen to the links below and consider if you can detect the part that stuck in the throat of those who resist putting a halt to Global Warming.

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Global Warming : New Record

Just when is November hotter than July ?

Well, for those of you in the Southern Hemisphere, you would expect November to be warmer than July.

But, globally ?

This week’s NASA GISS update of global temperature “anomalies”, the difference between now and pre-industrial figures, shows that, worldwide, November 2009 has been the hottest November ever in the instrumental record.

What can I say ? It’s warming up, folks ! And you’d better believe it. And we do know why, whatever the newspapers say to sell editions.

Global Warming : Choose Your Baseline

Just recently you may have overheard conversations like “the Earth has heated up by around 0.7 or 0.75 or 0.8 degrees Celsius since the start of the Industrial Revolution”. “No it hasn’t, it’s only warmed by 0.2 or 0.4 degrees Celsius !”

So who’s right ? And how can you tell ? It all depends on where you choose your baseline, the year you count from. And it also depends on the reach or spread of the data in the data set you are looking at.

If you believe that the 1800s were colder than normal, then you will think that the Earth has not warmed up so much, because you will discount everything before about 1940 because it was, to you colder than “average”.

Some of the data available on global temperatures “interpolates” for areas where measurements may be missing in certain geographical regions of the world. This can give the appearance that the data sets are different, when actually, they’re not.

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David Whitehouse Risks Inaccuracy

Dr David Whitehouse has had his personal views on Climate Change Science aired in the Daily Mail this week; yet the newspaper did not seek to offer an article responding to his position, which is somewhat at odds with the general conclusions of mainstream science :-

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1235126/What-told-Global-Warming–missing-facts.html

So, in the absence of the Daily Mail permitting a questioning or critiquing of David Whitehouse’s personal views, I shall here attempt to unpack how close he comes to inaccuracy.

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Climategate : Myles Allen is Confused

Dr Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics group at the University of Oxford’s Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics Department is confused. “It is odd that we still don’t take climate change seriously”, he writes in The Guardian online, discussing the fact that a good proportion of the British public don’t believe in Global Warming :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/11/science-climate-change-phil-jones

He might need to wake up to the fact that the British Press are being misled, and in turn, misleading the country.

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The Only Way Is Up

Image Credit : Anja Niedringhaus

It doesn’t matter which way up Michel Jarraud (Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization) holds the temperature chart. The only way the trend can be understood is upwards. The temperatures are going up.

That’s Global Warming, folks !

Looking at the temperature data from any of the major data sets around the world, it doesn’t take a second to accept that the Earth is warming :-

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Mini Hockey Sticks (2)

NOAA have posted the USA National Data analysis of the Climate for November 2009 :-

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=national&year=2009&month=11&submitted=Get+Report

Nationally in the United States, November 2009 was the third warmest November ever, based on preliminary data and there “was not a single state that averaged below normal temperatures for the month.”

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Untidy Minds #3 : Janet Daley

We’ve had Oxbridge Classics and Language graduates denying Global Warming in the Press in the last couple of weeks; now we’re on to the political commentators.

Why Global Warming Science is a matter for adversarial politics, you know Left and Right, liberal and conservative, I don’t know.

Global Climate Change is affecting us all, and pretty much the same steps will need to be taken by whichever party is in power, in whichever country. It doesn’t really have a political flavour. It’s not a matter of choice, or choice of policy. Climate Change policy is not based on political ideology.

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Untidy Minds #1 : Richard Lindzen

I must admit : even though I try to read widely, there are some things I miss. I’ve just become aware of a research paper that was published in Geophysical Research Letters in August 2009 :-

http://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf

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