What global warming..??

Patronage

There is a long and respectable history of patronage in science as well as art, literature, lexicography etc. The patrons (other than the church) used their own money. The modern patrons, however, are bureaucrats who use the money of others; to whit, taxpayers. Their science is not the science of recent tradition, but a whole new ball game.

There are major differences between real science and bureaucratic science (BS). Real science involves living with the prospect of failure. In BS, failure is not allowed. The whole project is mapped out beforehand in forms such as Gantt charts. There are deliverables that have to be delivered on the due date. With the exception of really big physics, real science is carried out by small groups. It is the same with BS, except that there are about five managers for every researcher. Above all the expected result must be delivered on time. Those who desire further patronage never report a negative result or, indeed, a result at variance with the expectations of the sponsors.

We can identify the “scientists” who habitually lie by the fact that they produce, on time, results that are never unexpected and always conform to the establishment-sponsored theory. Real science is never that predictable.

Powerful patronage makes people over-confident. They come to believe that they are untouchable. Like the royal favourites of mediaeval times, they soar in the air on a zephyr of preferment, only to get too close to the sun and plunge to earth.
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Rewriting the past

Critics of the apocalyptic global warming theory began to be disturbed at what was happening to experimental data under the cloak of secrecy surrounding the claims. One signal was assertion that the US results were based on a high quality sensor network. When that claim was made twice in one paragraph, it began to sound more like the patter of a second-hand car salesman than a statement by scientists. As a result, a small band of unpaid volunteers began a systematic review of the weather stations on which the claims were based. What they found was even more appalling than anyone had anticipated. Ramshackle is barely adequate to describe the system they found. The siting of many of the sensors broke all the rules. Many were on black tarmac and others were even adjacent to the outlets of air conditioning units. The High Quality Network was, to say the least, a mirage. But it was worse than this. Astute observers began to notice that the historical records of temperatures were changing and almost always in such a way as to increase the illusion of global warming. NASA, of all institutions, was involved in this dubious practice and it was all done without explanation.

All of this was widely reported on the internet, but the general public had no idea that it had happened.
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The amount of carbon emissions caused by world forest destruction is likely far less than the 20 percent figure being widely used before global climate talks in December, said the head of the Brazilian institute that measures Amazon deforestation.

Gilberto Camara, the director of Brazil's respected National Institute for Space Research, said the 20 percent tally was based on poor science but that rich countries had no interest in questioning it because the number put more pressure on developing countries to stem greenhouse gases.

"I'm not in favor of conspiracy theories," Camara told Reuters in a telephone interview on Friday.

"But I should only state that the two people who like these figures are developed nations, who would like to overstress the contribution of developing nations to global carbon, and of course environmentalists."

NOAA says that June 2009 was the second warmest June in 130 years. In sharp contrast, NASA satellite assessment had June virtually normal - 15th coldest in 31 years, says icecap.us.

Similarly, NOAA proclained May 2009 to be the 4th warmest May in 130 years.
NASA satellite assessment showed it was the 15th coldest May in 31 years, says icecap.

What's going on here?

"Icecap.us did a great story dealing with how NOAA fudged on the numbers including replacing sea surface temps with land-based temps to compensate for what they called a cold bias," says Dan. "Icecap.us also covered how they added nearly half a degree F to the raw surface observations. A bit fishy don't you think?"

* Icecap is not just a bunch of wild-eyed "deniers." Scroll down to
see a list of some of their experts.

In other words, NOAA removed satellite data that didn't conform to their desired predetermined outcome.

"Do you smell a rat?," asks Dan. "Nothing supports the NOAA claim. According to the RSS satellite data June 2009 wasn’t even in the top 5 this decade."
“Here is a direct quote from the original Icecap.us story...

"Also they in the last year made changes to the ocean temperature
data base removing the satellite data that they claimed was giving
a cold bias to the data."

“The real data isn't giving NOAA what they want so they are changing
it in order to tell a different story. They want global warming and the
real data doesn't back it up."

20 Aug 09 – “July was the hottest the world's oceans have been in almost 130 years of record-keeping,” says an article by Seth Borenstein published yesterday by the AP.

“The average water temperature worldwide was 17 C, according to the National Climatic Data Center, says Borenstein. (I think Seth could find global warming in a solid block of ice.) “June was only slightly cooler, while August could set another record, scientists say. The previous record was set in July, 1998, during a powerful El Nino weather pattern.”

NASA disagrees. See my July 29 article entitled NOAA fudging the
numbers.

“Meteorologists said there's a combination of forces at work,” says Borenstein. “A natural El Nino system just getting started on top of worsening man-made global warming, and a dash of random weather variations.”

He admits that it’s “a natural El Nino," but he still wants to
blame humans. Then he talks of “worsening man-made global
warming.” What global warming? It has been cooling since 1998.

“It could also hasten the melting of Arctic sea ice,” Borenstein warns.

Is Borenstein not aware that as of August 1st, Canada's
Northwest Passage was still clogged with ice?

“Breaking heat records in water is more ominous as a sign of global warming than breaking temperature marks on land,” Borenstein continues, “because water takes longer to heat up and does not cool off as easily as land.”

“Add to that an unusual weather pattern this summer where the warmest temperatures seem to be just over oceans, while slightly cooler air is concentrated over land.”

Did you catch that? “The warmest temperatures seem to be just
over oceans.” I’m thinking that this article is intended to take our
attention away from the fact that nine Midwestern states just endured,
not "slightly cooler” temperatures, but a record-cold July.

And not just one or two days out of the month, mind you, and not
just one or two cities - nine entire states reported a record-cold July.
(See Record Low Temperatures across the US - Aug 13).

A new study in the journal Science by a team of international of researchers led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research have found that the sunspot cycle has a big effect on the earth's weather.

You see the dynamic all the time. One newspaper (or broadcaster) runs a story and, within hours, the rest of the media pick it up and repeat it, sometimes with their own spin, but with the basic facts unchecked. Thus, a core error gets repeated and repeated until it becomes part of the narrative, pulled out for ever more whenever the issue is raised, becoming part of the received wisdom, simply by dint of constant repetition.

Discussing with one senior official a particularly egregious example of an error-ridden story which had spread through the system, in frustration he described the process as akin to journalists eating each others' turds.

Graphic though that image might be, it is uncannily accurate. You see it in any newsroom, where the assembled hacks have televisions tuned to all the main news channels, they have their competitors' products on their desks, and their websites on screen, each imbibing and re-excreting the droppings of each other, in a constant, self-perpetuating cycle.

There is an added dimension in the Westminster bubble, where the politicians pick up the choicest turds and produce their own, which are seized upon by the ravening hoards of political hacks, to reinforce the cycle.

A classic example of the general dynamic comes with the Independent's story of the sailing the "Northeast passage". This has now been picked up by The Times and the Mail. Both repeat the elements of the story but the latter, in classic tabloid style, "adds a Union Jack" to it – on the assumption that the matter is of no interest to its readers unless there is a British dimension.

Thus we get: "Melting ice cap opens up Northeast Passage to British ships", the lead paragraph telling us that: "The price of British imports from Asia could fall after two merchant ships completed an historic shortcut over the once ice-bound top of the world."

Having planted the flag, the paper then goes on to re-excrete the Independent's droppings, asserting that, "They [the merchant ships] are the first commercial vessels to successfully travel between Asia and Europe using the Northeast Passage and the shipping lane could become a viable alternative to the established Suez Canal route during a six to eight-week window every summer."

Amusingly, not once in its piece does the Mail mention that the ships which completed the "historic shortcut" were German. Although the paper is happy to deliver its own variety of turds, its editors presumably judged that this particular bit of information was too strong for its readers' stomachs.

Nevertheless, the paper repeats without question the shipping company's claim – as retailed by The Independent - that it had saved £180,000 per vessel by using the route to sail from South Korea to Rotterdam. We are faithfully told that: "It is 3,500 miles and ten days shorter than the established 12,500-mile merchant ship journey, which goes through the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean."



[...]





Nevertheless, since the whole purpose of the ships' journey was to deliver cargo to this Siberian town, it defies imagination as to how the owners were actually saving money, compared with taking a different route. They took that route because they were obliged to take it. There was no realistic alternative. And as the ships required not one, but two icebreaker escorts – as we now learn – it is extremely hard to see how the route could save any money at all for normal commercial traffic.

We’ve always suspected that Mann’s tree ring proxies aren’t all they are cracked up to be. The graph below is stunning in it’s message and I’m pleased to present it to WUWT readers. I’m sure the Team is already working up ways to say “it doesn’t matter”.



The QOTW this week centers around this graph:



The quote of the week is:

I hardly know where to begin in terms of commentary on this difference.

- Steve McIntyre, Climate Audit in Yamal: A “Divergence” Problem

The graph above shows what happens to the “Hockey Stick” after additional tree ring data, recently released (after a long and protracted fight over data access) is added to the analysis of Hadley’s archived tree ring data in Yamal, Russia.

All of the sudden, it isn’t the “hottest period in 2000 years” anymore.

Steve writes:

The next graphic compares the RCS chronologies from the two slightly different data sets: red – the RCS chronology calculated from the CRU archive (with the 12 picked cores); black – the RCS chronology calculated using the Schweingruber Yamal sample of living trees instead of the 12 picked trees used in the CRU archive. The difference is breathtaking.


I’ll say. Ding Dong the stick is dead.

This comparison to CRU archive data illustrates the most extreme example of scientific cherry-picking ever seen. As Steve writes in comments at CA:

Also keep in mind the implausibly small size of the current portion of the Yamal archive. It would be one thing if they had only sampled 10 trees and this is what they got. But they selected 10 trees out of a larger population. Because the selection yields such different results from a nearby population sample, there is a compelling prima facie argument that they’ve made biased picks. This is rebuttable. I would welcome hearing the argument on the other side. I’ve notified one dendro of the issue and requested him to assist in the interpretation of the new data (but am not very hopeful that he will speak up.)

See the complete report on this new development in the sordid story of tree ring proxies used for climate interpretation at Climate Audit. And while you are there, please give Steve a hit on the tip jar. With this revelation, he’s earned it.

The next time somebody tells you that tree rings prove we are living in the “hottest period in 2000 years” show them this graph and point them to this Climate Audit article.

Ontarians take note. A detailed new Danish study shatters most of the myths that the Danish-based wind turbine industry has been propagating in Canada and around the world as to the virtues of wind power. The study, Wind Energy: The Case of Denmark by the Centre for Policy Studies in Copenhagen, strongly reinforces reservations that I have noted in previous op-eds in this newspaper.

While proponents of wind power like to claim that almost 20% of Danish electricity is generated by wind power, in fact over the last five years wind power has accounted for only about 9% of domestic electricity consumption. The other 11% or so — generated when the wind was blowing in the middle of the night or at other times that power was unneeded in Denmark — was exported to Norway and Sweden at spot prices that were substantially lower (often zero) than the subsidized prices guaranteed to Danish wind turbine operators. Meanwhile, when the wind wasn’t blowing in conformity with Danish needs, Denmark needed to import balancing power from Norway and Sweden, typically at substantially higher costs.

The main attraction in wind is the elimination of CO2 emissions. To the extent that wind power reduces CO2 emissions in Denmark, this comes as a subsidy cost of about $124 per tonne of CO2 — one of the most expensive CO2 reduction strategies in the world.

In order to keep industry competitive, the Danish government protects industry at the expense of consumers. Electricity to industry is hardly taxed at all, making for an outsized disparity between what householders and industry pay for their electricity — Danish householders pay 2.5 times more than Danish industry. Even before taxes, the average consumer price for wind-generated electricity is 50% higher than that from fossil fuel generated electricity.

Based on the total subsidies to the Danish wind industry, the average subsidy for the 28,000 workers employed in this sector equals US$9,000 to US$14,000 per year per job. However, this average subsidy does not reflect the actual cost of the additional job creation. In most cases, creating a job in the wind sector has only moved that job from another sector and not resulted in any additional job creation. A very optimistic ball park estimate of real net jobs created is around 10% of the total wind power work force, or 2,800 jobs. In this case, the actual subsidy for each additional job created is US$90,000 to US$140,000.

The Danish study finds that the energy technology sector in Denmark from 1999 to 2006 underperformed the broader manufacturing sector in Denmark by an average of 13% in terms of value added, reducing Danish GDP by approximately $270-million compared to what it would have been if the wind sector workforce was employed elsewhere. The Danish Economic Council concluded in a report in 2006: “The wind power expansion in the 1990s is an example of a policy that was unprofitable from society’s point of view, even taking the economic advantages that the wind business enjoyed into consideration.” The Centre for Policy Studies study concludes: “Denmark needs a proper debate and a thorough reappraisal of the technologies that need to be invented, developed, and costed before forcing the country into a venture that shows a high risk of turning into an economic black hole.”

Partly mesmerized by Danish wind industry propaganda, the Ontario government has embarked upon a similar exercise in economic and environmental folly. When the full costs of this misadventure are revealed — billions of dollars over the next 20years — the province’s recent financial scandals at the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Commission and eHealth will seem trivial in comparison. This is the real political scandal in Ontario, upon which we should all be focusing our attention.

Michael Trebilcock is Professor of Law and Economics, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, and a director of Energy Probe Research Foundation.
Link

I have been probing the arguments for global warming for well over a decade. In collaboration with a lot of excellent coauthors I have consistently found that when the layers get peeled back, what lies at the core is either flawed, misleading or simply non-existent. The surface temperature data is a contaminated mess with a significant warm bias, and as I have detailed elsewhere the IPCC fabricated evidence in its 2007 report to cover up the problem. Climate models are in gross disagreement with observations, and the discrepancy is growing with each passing year. The often-hyped claim that the modern climate has departed from natural variability depended on flawed statistical methods and low-quality data. The IPCC review process, of which I was a member last time, is nothing at all like what the public has been told: Conflicts of interest are endemic, critical evidence is systematically ignored and there are no effective checks and balances against bias or distortion.

This week’s claims by Steve McInyre that scientists associated with the UK Met. Office have been less than diligent are serious and suggest some of the most defended building blocks of the case for anthropogenic global warming are based on the indefensible when the methodology is laid bare.

This sorry saga also raises issues associated with how data is archived at the UK Met. Office with incomplete data sets that spuriously support the case for global warming being promoted while complete data sets are kept hidden from the public – including from scientific sceptics like Steve McIntyre.

It is indeed time leading scientists at the Climate Research Centre associated with the UK Met. Office explain how Mr McIntyre is in error or resign.

EPA: The Blob that Ate America

No single government agency has grown so big and so fast as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and no single agency threatens constitutionally guaranteed property rights and nationwide economic growth than the EPA.

It is the Blob that ate America.

Signed into law by Richard M. Nixon in 1970, the EPA has so consistently twisted the truth about the environment that its announcements must be dissected like a cadaver to find any verifiable facts.

This agency of the government is so brazen that it is currently trying to bully Congress, the seat of government, into passing the horrid Cap-and-Trade bill so that it might then regulate stationary sources that emit more than 25,000 tons of greenhouse gases per year.

In its endless quest for more and more power over all aspects our lives, the EPA wants to rewrite the 1970 Clean Air Act to include so-called greenhouse gases. That is why its Senate sponsors have obligingly renamed it a “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act."

It is based entirely on the global warming hoax.