Climate links
Imre S. proves to be a very bad, but very funny, man.
Before and after pictures of flooded Brisbane: a fairly mild indicator of the devastation across Queensland.
Evidence of medieval warm period in Antarctica.
According to Greenland ice core data, only 9,099 years of the last 10,500 were warmer than 2010. (There is a reason “the Little Ice Age” is called that.)
The latest climate warming model has lower estimates of future warming.
Apparently, global warming is now causing freezing weather. (Possibly based on the study mentioned here.) Ten years ago we were being told that snowfalls would be a thing of the past.
Reasons to expect cooler-than-average weather over the next few months.
The UK Met Office now estimates there has been a 0.8o rise in temperature since 1850, with no warming since 1995. Noting the UK Met Office’s appalling (and now dishonest) forecasting record. About the astrophysicist whose weather predictions have been much better than the UK Met Office’s. (His website is here.) Report that the BBC, the Met and the Cabinet Office are now in fight over what forecasts were suppressed and by whom. Post with lots of links on this ongoing story. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology is doing spectacularly badly on its recent forecasts too.
The Professor of Meteorology at MIT takes brutal aim at the global warming scare:
The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well. …
Inevitably in climate science, when data conflicts with models, a small coterie of scientists can be counted upon to modify the data. Thus, Santer, et al (2008), argue that stretching uncertainties in observations and models might marginally eliminate the inconsistency. That the data should always need correcting to agree with models is totally implausible and indicative of a certain corruption within the climate science community. …
As it turns out, the satellite data from the ERBE instrument (Barkstrom, 1984, Wong et al, 2006) shows that the feedback in nature is strongly negative -- strongly reducing the direct effect of CO2 (Lindzen and Choi, 2009) in profound contrast to the model behavior. This analysis makes clear that even when all models agree, they can all be wrong, and that this is the situation for the all important question of climate sensitivity. Unfortuanately, Lindzen and Choi (2009) contained a number of errors; however, as shown in a paper currently under review, these errors were not relevant to the main conclusion. …
Wasting resources on symbolically fighting ever present climate change is no substitute for prudence. Nor is the assumption that the earth’s climate reached a point of perfection in the middle of the twentieth century a sign of intelligence.
Global warming is the eugenics of our time: a new science exhibiting premature certainty, appealing to fashionable prejudices and justifying centralized control over basic aspects of existence.
About a study which eliminated categories of scientists and responders until it got the “consensus” it wanted. More. A longer analysis.
About the Judith Curry phenomenon and the difficulty in having a civil conversation about climate.
Fewer Americans think that global warming is an established scientific fact. Fewer Australians think that global warming is a major issue.
Vaclav Klaus on climate alarmism:
Theory is crucial and in this case it is missing. Pure statistical analysis does not explain or confirm anything. Two Chinese scientists, Guang Wu and Shaomin Yan, published a study in which they used the random walk model to ¬analyze the global temperature fluctuations in the last 160 years. Their results - rather unpleasantly for the global-warming alarmists - show that the random walk model perfectly fits the temperature changes. Because “the random walk model has a perfect fit for the recorded temperature … there is no need to include various man-made factors such as CO2, and non-human factors, such as the Sun” to improve the quality of the model fit, they say. It is an important result. Do other models give a better fit? I have not seen any.
… We should be prepared to adapt to all kinds of future climate changes (including cooling), but we should never accept losing our freedom.
The full speech. A very pessimistic reading of the Chairman’s Note agreed to at Cancun.
A new work argues that liberal democracy is not up to the task of ecological management.
Study finds that cold periods have led to population crashes in China over the last nine centuries:
Prior theory had suggested that population crashes were either due to pure Malthusian cycles (overpopulation leading to a crash) or to bad governance, but this new work suggests that agrarian societies such as preindustrial China tend to increase in population to a maximum level, but then cold periods reduce agricultural production, thereby promoting multiple types of conflict and disruption that ultimately lead to population contraction. Given these finding, it would thus appear that cold episodes are more dangerous to human society than warm episodes, at least within the scope of these historical fluctuations.
A further study extends the analysis over two millennia:
hat "food production during the last two millennia has been more unstable during cooler periods, resulting in more social conflicts," while specifically noting that "cooling shows direct positive association with the frequency of external aggression war to the Chinese dynasties mostly from the northern pastoral nomadic societies, and indirect positive association with the frequency of internal war within the Chinese dynasties through drought and locust plagues," which have typically been more pronounced during cooler as opposed to warmer times. …
that "during the last two millennia, food production in ancient China was more stable during warm periods owing to fewer agricultural disasters, resulting in fewer social conflicts."
An earlier study on the impact of climate change on human history.
About elite snobbery and the politics of fear:
This reveals the stinging snobbery at the heart of the politics of global warming. Because what we have here is an updated version of the elitist idea that the better classes have access to a profound and complicated truth that the rest of us cannot grasp. Where we have merely sensory reactions (experience), they have reason and analysis (knowledge). Our critical reaction to the snow actually revealed our failure to understand The Truth, as unveiled by The Science, rather than revealing their wrongheadedness in predicting an ‘end to snow’. We are ‘simple’, they are ‘reasoned’. In 2011, we should take everything that is said by this new doom-mongering expert caste with a large pinch of salt - and then spread that salt on the snow which they claimed had disappeared from our lives.
Paper suggests that “climate science denial” is more ideological driven than corporate driven. One could do the same study in reverse: the notion that one side of the debate is fearless seekers after the truth and the other side is the venal and the ideological is a nice fairy story, but hardly likely to correspond to reality.
Before and after pictures of flooded Brisbane: a fairly mild indicator of the devastation across Queensland.
Evidence of medieval warm period in Antarctica.
According to Greenland ice core data, only 9,099 years of the last 10,500 were warmer than 2010. (There is a reason “the Little Ice Age” is called that.)
The latest climate warming model has lower estimates of future warming.
Apparently, global warming is now causing freezing weather. (Possibly based on the study mentioned here.) Ten years ago we were being told that snowfalls would be a thing of the past.
Reasons to expect cooler-than-average weather over the next few months.
The UK Met Office now estimates there has been a 0.8o rise in temperature since 1850, with no warming since 1995. Noting the UK Met Office’s appalling (and now dishonest) forecasting record. About the astrophysicist whose weather predictions have been much better than the UK Met Office’s. (His website is here.) Report that the BBC, the Met and the Cabinet Office are now in fight over what forecasts were suppressed and by whom. Post with lots of links on this ongoing story. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology is doing spectacularly badly on its recent forecasts too.
The Professor of Meteorology at MIT takes brutal aim at the global warming scare:
The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well. …
Inevitably in climate science, when data conflicts with models, a small coterie of scientists can be counted upon to modify the data. Thus, Santer, et al (2008), argue that stretching uncertainties in observations and models might marginally eliminate the inconsistency. That the data should always need correcting to agree with models is totally implausible and indicative of a certain corruption within the climate science community. …
As it turns out, the satellite data from the ERBE instrument (Barkstrom, 1984, Wong et al, 2006) shows that the feedback in nature is strongly negative -- strongly reducing the direct effect of CO2 (Lindzen and Choi, 2009) in profound contrast to the model behavior. This analysis makes clear that even when all models agree, they can all be wrong, and that this is the situation for the all important question of climate sensitivity. Unfortuanately, Lindzen and Choi (2009) contained a number of errors; however, as shown in a paper currently under review, these errors were not relevant to the main conclusion. …
Wasting resources on symbolically fighting ever present climate change is no substitute for prudence. Nor is the assumption that the earth’s climate reached a point of perfection in the middle of the twentieth century a sign of intelligence.
Global warming is the eugenics of our time: a new science exhibiting premature certainty, appealing to fashionable prejudices and justifying centralized control over basic aspects of existence.
About a study which eliminated categories of scientists and responders until it got the “consensus” it wanted. More. A longer analysis.
About the Judith Curry phenomenon and the difficulty in having a civil conversation about climate.
Fewer Americans think that global warming is an established scientific fact. Fewer Australians think that global warming is a major issue.
Vaclav Klaus on climate alarmism:
Theory is crucial and in this case it is missing. Pure statistical analysis does not explain or confirm anything. Two Chinese scientists, Guang Wu and Shaomin Yan, published a study in which they used the random walk model to ¬analyze the global temperature fluctuations in the last 160 years. Their results - rather unpleasantly for the global-warming alarmists - show that the random walk model perfectly fits the temperature changes. Because “the random walk model has a perfect fit for the recorded temperature … there is no need to include various man-made factors such as CO2, and non-human factors, such as the Sun” to improve the quality of the model fit, they say. It is an important result. Do other models give a better fit? I have not seen any.
… We should be prepared to adapt to all kinds of future climate changes (including cooling), but we should never accept losing our freedom.
The full speech. A very pessimistic reading of the Chairman’s Note agreed to at Cancun.
A new work argues that liberal democracy is not up to the task of ecological management.
Study finds that cold periods have led to population crashes in China over the last nine centuries:
Prior theory had suggested that population crashes were either due to pure Malthusian cycles (overpopulation leading to a crash) or to bad governance, but this new work suggests that agrarian societies such as preindustrial China tend to increase in population to a maximum level, but then cold periods reduce agricultural production, thereby promoting multiple types of conflict and disruption that ultimately lead to population contraction. Given these finding, it would thus appear that cold episodes are more dangerous to human society than warm episodes, at least within the scope of these historical fluctuations.
A further study extends the analysis over two millennia:
hat "food production during the last two millennia has been more unstable during cooler periods, resulting in more social conflicts," while specifically noting that "cooling shows direct positive association with the frequency of external aggression war to the Chinese dynasties mostly from the northern pastoral nomadic societies, and indirect positive association with the frequency of internal war within the Chinese dynasties through drought and locust plagues," which have typically been more pronounced during cooler as opposed to warmer times. …
that "during the last two millennia, food production in ancient China was more stable during warm periods owing to fewer agricultural disasters, resulting in fewer social conflicts."
An earlier study on the impact of climate change on human history.
About elite snobbery and the politics of fear:
This reveals the stinging snobbery at the heart of the politics of global warming. Because what we have here is an updated version of the elitist idea that the better classes have access to a profound and complicated truth that the rest of us cannot grasp. Where we have merely sensory reactions (experience), they have reason and analysis (knowledge). Our critical reaction to the snow actually revealed our failure to understand The Truth, as unveiled by The Science, rather than revealing their wrongheadedness in predicting an ‘end to snow’. We are ‘simple’, they are ‘reasoned’. In 2011, we should take everything that is said by this new doom-mongering expert caste with a large pinch of salt - and then spread that salt on the snow which they claimed had disappeared from our lives.
Paper suggests that “climate science denial” is more ideological driven than corporate driven. One could do the same study in reverse: the notion that one side of the debate is fearless seekers after the truth and the other side is the venal and the ideological is a nice fairy story, but hardly likely to correspond to reality.