Satellite graphics show the Earth's surface cooling during the years 1982 to 2006

"The amazing finding of the present study is that we do not observe global warming in the period 1982-2006, but significant cooling."

Source: Andries Rosema, Steven Foppes, Joost van der Woerd

Surface temperature as in 'temperature of the surface' is not what is routinely measured or referred to in meteorology.  Surface temperature in meteorological observations usually refers to air temperature close to the ground, usually around 5 feet (1.25 to 2.0 metres) above the surface - the height at which weather stations are meant to take this measurement.

But what of the actual surface temperature?  This is tricky to measure given the wide variety of surfaces, and the lack of any convention as to depth.  But a geostationary satellite can take a broad view, in the case of Meteosat this mainly has a 5km resolution for temperature estimates.  Looking down from above, that level of coarseness will help reduce the variation that would be expected at finer scales.

In their study published this year in the journal Energy & Environment, the three authors report how they took 25 years worth of satellite imagery from Meteosat from noon and midnight each day, and extracted estimates of surface temperatures from them.  They used infra-red wavelengths for which the atmosphere is largely transparent in cloudless skies.  But of course, there is always cloud to be seen in any hemisphere image.  Their method to reduce the effect of clouds was to look at successive time periods (of 10, 20, and 30 days) and choose the highest temperature found (the 'brightest pixel') within each period.  The hope is that that is likely to be from a relatively cloud-free day since cloud tops are much cooler than the surface.
There are other adjustment and computations to be made as described in the paper, but the authors seem reasonably confident that their results are sensible.  They provide subsets of their data plotted as time-series for typical and atypical locations, and find the results plausible in each case.

There are no equivalent ground-based measurements to provide a cross-check for these results, but perhaps it may be possible to construct estimates of what they might be for simpler locations, e.g. sea areas.

These results will hopefully be subjected to considerable scrutiny and review, but I report them here at this stage simply as an illustration of 'unsettled science'.  We have here results which on the face of it contradict the claims of relentless warming pushed by such as James Hansen in the late 1980s, including at the infamous hearing of 1988 in Washington.  So many people have subsequently picked up on such claims and treated them as gospel that we are today in a very unsatisfactory position of having zealots for alarm poisoning discourse in this area, be it political or be it scientific discourse.  Good teaching should help pupils step back from this unedifying spectacle, and form calmer and more considered opinions of what is going on.

Hat-tip: Greenie Watch which provides a link to this article on the above paper.

Note added a few hours after posting  Some recent comments on this paper can be found here: http://objectivistindividualist.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/earth-surface-cooled-from-1982-to-2006.html
Note added 09 August 2013  Project for the reader.  The site CO2 Science provides a temperature plotter which can be used to look at temperatures attributed to zones 5deg (lat, long) on the side.  It might be interesting to see how these computed mean surface air temperatures plots compare with those for specific locations provided in the paper over the same time periods.

Ten-minute trainer: a case against the establishment case for alarm over CO2

For teachers with 30 minutes to spare, and a suitable class (perhaps one whose important exams in this area have been completed successfully), here is a brief YouTube clip which does a cool, calm, and collected job of undermining the case for alarm over CO2 - a case which may be taken for granted in your curricula.  He is particularly critical of the 'positive feedbacks' which are a crucial part of the case for alarm:


This is a short video of about 13 minutes (no 10-minute trainer takes exactly 10 minutes!) linked to at the NoTricksZone which notes it was linked to in a tweet by Tallbloke.

The video is the work of David Evans in Australia. More details of his case can be found here:

http://joannenova.com.au/2012/01/dr-david-evans-the-skeptics-case/

and he has also produced some very good, but longer videos here: http://joannenova.com.au/2012/04/david-evans-explains-the-skeptics-case-youtube/

Some minor points. 

(1)   The claim that positive water-vapour driven feedback is ‘assumed’ in the models is not quite correct.  What they assume is that global relative humidity stays constant as temperature rises.  This necessarily means water vapour levels will increase in the models, and this is what is believed to lead to the positive feedback that appears in them.  In practice, there is some evidence that relative humidity has been decreasing in recent decades. 

 Source: http://www.climate4you.com/ 

(2)    The first graphic in the short video shows ‘observed temperature increase’ as the output of models.  If it was in fact the observed temperature increase, then the models would be doing a perfect job on them.  Actually the output of models is ‘expected temperatures’, or 'predicted temperatures'.  When these are compared with observed temperatures, the discrepancies are obvious.

Towards a Calmer Curriculum on Climate: some human impact possible on global warming, but too small to identify with assurance

"My overall view of the influence of humans on climate is that we probably are having some influence, but it is impossible to know with any level of certainty how much influence. The difficulty in determining the human influence on climate arises from several sources: 

(1) weather and climate vary naturally, and by amounts that are not currently being exceeded;

(2) global warming theory is just that – based upon theory; and

(3) there is no unique fingerprint of human caused global warming.

 My belief that some portion of recent warming is due to humans is based upon my faith in at least some portion of the theory: that the human contribution to atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations has resulted in an estimated 1% reduction in the Earth’s ability to cool to outer space, and so some level of warming can be expected to occur from that change

Exactly how much warming will occur, however, depends upon something we call “climate sensitivity” (Spencer & Braswell, 2010; 2011), and relatively few researchers in the world – probably not much more than a dozen – have researched how sensitive today’s climate system is based upon actual measurements. This is why popular surveys of climate scientists and their beliefs regarding global warming have little meaning: very few of them have actually worked on the details involved in determining exactly how much warming might result from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

Our most recent peer-reviewed paper on this subject, Spencer & Braswell (2013), has arrived at a climate sensitivity of only 1.3 deg. C for a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide, based upon a variety of global measurements, including warming of the global oceans since the 1950s. This level of warming is below the lower limit of 1.5 deg. C minimum predicted in the last (AR4) IPCC report. It is also in line with (an admitted minority of) other estimates of low climate sensitivity published in the peer review literature.

It should also be noted that the fact that I believe at least some of recent warming is human-caused places me in the 97% of researchers recently claimed to support the global warming consensus (actually, it’s 97% of the published papers, Cook et al., 2013). The 97% statement is therefore rather innocuous, since it probably includes all of the global warming “skeptics” I know of who are actively working in the field. Skeptics generally are skeptical of the view that recent warming is all human-caused, and/or that it is of a sufficient magnitude to warrant immediate action given the cost of energy policies to the poor. They do not claim humans have no impact on climate whatsoever."

Extract from the testimony made by Roy W. Spencer on 18th July 2013 to the Environment and Public Works Committee of the US Senate.  

His statement includes this description of his relevant background: "I have been performing U.S. government-sponsored research for the last twentyeight years, publishing peer reviewed papers on global temperature monitoring with satellites, on the amount of warming we might expect from greenhouse gas emissions, how to monitor hurricane strength from satellites, and quantitatively explaining ocean heat content changes. 

 Prior to my current position as a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, I was Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. I am also the U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-E flying on NASA’s Earth-observation satellite Aqua. I am a recipient of NASA’s Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement."

Climate-Related Hazards: time to warn your nearest and dearest about irresponsible adults howling at the moon over carbon dioxide and climate

If you are not careful, you can pick up foolish ideas in the same way as you can catch the flu – simply by contact with someone already afflicted.  No thinking is required on your part, no analysis, no checking things out for yourself – you just acquire the opinion along with some superficial support for it.  Thus you decide that CO2 emissions must be dramatically reduced because CO2 is a greenhouse gas that is ‘trapping’ heat in the atmosphere.  Suitably debilitated by this, you are vulnerable to secondary infections such as the facile attribution of any or all bad weather to ‘climate change’, and you are already using those two words not as a platitude (since climate has always changed) but as shorthand for ‘catastrophic anthropogenic global warming’ (cagw).

In some cases, the afflicted ones feel driven to share, or spread, their troubles with others and take to campaigning and lobbying.  It seems that the condition is aggravated if all the people around you don’t suffer from it, or if you learn of large groups who seem to have some kind of immunity.  

In the worst cases, there emerges an evangelical zeal reminiscent of religious zealots who have achieved a state in which all contrarian appeals to reason are shrugged off as the work of the devil.  In the climate-related cults, fossil-fuel companies are seen as the source of much evil, and are held to be providing colossal levels of funding to help devils pursue their wicked ways.  No one has yet found any evidence of this, but of course that goes to show just how clever Big Coal etc have been.  

One High Temple and One Cheerleader for Alarm

Source

 One of the high temples of climate alarm has been the UK Meteorological Office, led as it has been by such as John Houghton (a key schemer in the IPCC), and Robert Napier (a man who helped lead the WWF and other bodies into climate-alarm evangelism ). 

This commitment to giving CO2 a driving role in the climate system has not been a success as far the public is concerned, since the warm-bias this has given their seasonal predictions has been seriously misleading both for winters which turned out to be colder and snowier than we were told to expect, or summers which turned out to be cooler and wetter.

A few days ago, an anonymous (sad to say) commenter called 'ntropyalwayswins' on one of their web sites urged the MetOffice to get back to concentrating on weather forecasts:

The Met Office should stick to what it is good at – namely forecasting the weather and should only do this for a period of time where forecasts can be relied upon. To issue a longer term forecast that suggests 30% hot 30% cold 40% somewhere in between is really not very useful and invites ridicule.

You need to continue to rein back heavily on your embarrassingly overconfident statements on climate. Recent announcements from the MO indicate that at long last you are admitting that you do not understand natural variability. Until you do it is ok to answer all questions about the future climate of Britain and the world with a simple ‘We do not know’

As your false confidence has already caused immeasurable harm to the citizens and economy of the UK you should issue a statement encouraging the UK government to disregard all prior climate advice from the MO and, lest they do not have the good sense themselves to see the implications thereof, suggest that they may need to re-assess the need for the Climate Change Act which the rest of the world rightly sees as the Economic Suicide Act.

Plus it would do no harm to issue a public apology for getting it consistently wrong. That is the grown-up thing to do.

In the States, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) has emerged as a major cheerleader for climate alarm, choosing a decidedly non-geophysical Chris Mooney to be one of their directors for a while – he is a graduate in English who has spotted climate agitation as a means of furthering his left-wing views, and appointing to lead their Ethics Committee, of all things, a Peter Gleick who shortly thereafter resigned in disgrace after displaying decidely unethical behaviour to further his own crusade for more alarm.  A podcast interview on this with the president of the AGU during that unhappy time is available on David Appell's blog, an interview in which this president reveals himself as also being afflicted with climate alarm (‘the evidence is pretty much incontrovertible’).

Source

The new president seems also to be a victim.  The picture shows her speaking at one of their conferences.  A conference about which the physicist Norman Rogers has written a scathing report, extracts from which follow:

"What they are doing is howling at the moon that the sky is falling.  The president of the AGU, Carol Finn, who, incidentally, is employed by the federal government, opened the lobbying/communications workshop on the first day of the conference with this:

'AGU's mission is to promote discovery ... for the benefit of humanity[.] ... I live in Colorado[.] ... [L]ast week's Black Forest fire ... was the worst wildfire in Colorado's history[.] ... I live in Boulder County[.] ... [T]he county and the city of Longmont have just outlawed fracking[.] ... [A]ll these communities need to be able to try to figure out how to balance energy development and putting drill rigs next to schools[.]'

The subtext here, repeated over and over at the conference, is that global warming causes forest fires and that hydrocarbon development is undesirable, if not dangerous.  But perhaps forest fires are started by matches.  Maybe hydrocarbon development is preferable to riding around on horses.

How trustworthy is an organization that claims to be organized for the "benefit of humanity," anyway?

The illogical thinking and ever-changing stories about global warming doom are puzzling.  What motivates the global warming proselytizers?  Is there a root belief that explains their behavior?  My suggestion is that their behavior is religious in nature and can be explained if we postulate that they believe in the following commandment:

Thou shalt not add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

If you realize that the story is not really about global warming, but rather about changing the composition of the atmosphere, it becomes easy to understand why the believers are not disturbed by the fact that global warming, as measured by surface temperature, stopped 16 years ago.  They easily find other scientific theories to buttress their faith.  They ignore or discredit any science that challenges their faith.  They tell us that if we don't stop adding carbon dioxide to the air, we will have extreme weather and the oceans will become acidified.  The polar bears will die.  The wine will lose its flavor.  We will catch exotic diseases.  If one theory of doom is refuted, or becomes boring, there are plenty of others to take its place.  Embarrassing information, such as the fact that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere makes plants grow faster, with less water, is dismissed.  They say plants grow faster, but they are less nutritious, or they grow faster, but they deplete the soil of its nutrients.

What we have is an obsession with the evil of carbon dioxide -- a carbon cult.

The great majority of people who are members of the AGU are interested in science, not in a new religion centered on carbon.  They have not woken up to the fact that their organization has been infiltrated by a carbon cult." ...

... "The attendees were told to explain why the weather would be more extreme by comparing carbon dioxide to steroids.  If an athlete takes steroids, he will still play the game, but his performance will be more extreme.

 

One difference between a cult and a legitimate religion is that the cults usually hide their true nature.  The more bizarre the cult, the greater the imperative to hide its doctrines.  The general public must not be allowed to realize that the advocates of global warming alarmism are in reality making up the story to propagate a fanatical faith that carbon dioxide is bad.

The science behind global warming is very shoddy.  Yes, there is a nugget of real science buried in all the alarmist, made-up stuff.  Carbon dioxide does absorb infrared radiation, and increased carbon dioxide probably will warm the Earth by a small amount.  The mechanism is quite complicated, involving the atmospheric lapse rate and a slight relocation of the tropopause.

The complicated and jargon-laden science is reduced, by the missionaries of the carbon cult, for public consumption, to "carbon dioxide is a heat-trapping gas."  The formal predictions of global warming from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are the product of an opinion poll of computer models that disagree with each other and that have been manipulated to make them look better than they really are.  The carbon cultists accept those predications as serious and profound scientific truth, because the predictions provide support for their faith."

                                        ----------------------------------------------

So, how are we to warn our nearest and dearest about these people who are seized with an urge to scare the wits out of us?  I do not have any new ideas for this.  Until the Fabled Fossil Fuel Funds or something like them are located, and there is not the slightest sign of them even existing, it will have to be through low-cost means.  Fortunately we still have the Internet for the fast sharing of thoughts, and to take part in discussions to test and sharpen our criticisms of the harmful zealotry of climate alarm.  There are books which contain the bigger picture, including at least one specifically aimed at helping parents talk with their children about climate and other eco-scares.   We can all help those nearest to us to listen more calmly to the panic-stricken calls for more alarm and more radical actions on CO2, and help them get these calls into perspective.  From there, the word will surely spread through the mass media and into the political class, where there are already leaders of this school of thought writing and campaigning.  Eventually, even state-controlled schools will surely want to be less welcoming to alarmists, and to be vigorously pro-active at helping their pupils handle their insidious views and methods. 

Climate Teachers: if your pupils watch TV in the USA, this is what you are up against

Networks Do 92 Climate Change Stories; Fail to Mention ‘Lull’ in Warming All 92 Times

  Extracts from article by Julia A. Seymour

• Recent years’ slowdown in global warming completely ignored by networks 92 climate change stories in 2013.
• Stories citing experts or the latest studies promoting alarmism get covered more than 8 times as often as critical experts and studies.
• Although many scientists say no, ABC, CBS and NBC continue to link weather events like tornadoes, hurricanes, heat waves and more to climate change nearly one-fourth of the time. "

 ...

"Just since Jan. 1, 2013, ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news programs have aired 92 stories about “climate change” or “global warming.” Not a single one of those stories mentioned the “warming plateau” reported even by The New York Times on June 10. The Times wrote, “The rise in the surface temperature of earth has been markedly slower over the last 15 years than in the 20 years before that. And that lull in warming has occurred even as greenhouse gases have accumulated in the atmosphere at a record pace.” Even though the Times piece wasn't published until June 10, a warming slowdown had been reported by foreign media outlets in November 2012, and by The Economist online in March, Reuters in April and BBC online in May of 2013."

  ...

8 Times the Alarmism

"New reports, studies or scientists that warned of the threat of climate change from concern over penguin populations, to predictions of sea level rise continued to be promoted by the networks in 2013. There were stories or news briefs warning that flying would become more turbulent because of climate change, connecting allergies to global warming, and others worrying about glacial melt and sea level rise.

There were 25 networks reports that mentioned a new report or analysis or that cited a scientist who promoted the climate alarmist viewpoint. That was 8 times as many as the other side; there were only three stories that cited a report or included such a scientist challenging alarmism.

The networks consulted scientists from NASA and NOAA as well as activists like Michael Oppenheimer from Princeton, who has gotten climate predictions wrong in the past. “Nightly News” interviewed Kenneth Kunkel from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center on May 25 who continued the hype, saying “If we continue to increase atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we will warm the globe and that will bring certain risks into play or increase the risks of certain types of extremes.”

...

 In spite of science, networks continue to link weather to climate

"Weather events that did a lot of damage and claimed lives, like the recent Oklahoma tornado and last year’s “Superstorm Sandy” were cited as incontrovertible proof of climate change. Scientists who argued otherwise were left out of the broadcasts. Even snowfall, wildfires and droughts were mentioned in some reports as examples of what one reporter called “globalweirding.”

On Jan. 8, NBC “Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams mentioned a new report on the cost of extreme weather saying “natural disasters caused a total of $160 billion damage around the world in 2012 ... These new numbers coincide with a new official look at just how hot our past year was.” Anne Thompson followed up his introduction by linking the “year of extreme weather” to “nature and man made climate change.”

Meteorologist Joe Bastardi has vehemently opposed such connections and told Forbes.com columnist Larry Bell, “The fact is that those alarmist claims [about weather getting more extreme because of man made climate change] simply aren’t true.”

  Source

Note added 29 June 2013:  Here are some more links to recently published articles on this topic:

 PBS NewsHour global warming coverage: IPCC/NOAA Scientists – 18; Skeptic Scientists – 0

Why the MSM Is Stupid About AGW

 

Parents Driven to Distraction and Death by Climate Scares

It is well known that climate agitators have been using children as a means by which to influence their parents.  Some are quite happy to deploy Schneiderian Scenarios (scary, simplified, dramatic) to help that along.  But it is not just children who are being scared by tall tales of a climate crisis caused by people. Some parents are succumbing to them as well, and it seems all too likely that this means more stress for their own children.   In one case reported on below, suicide and child murder was the result, and in another, both of these are being contemplated.

Some parents are seized with pessimistic thoughts. 

Example 1.  Here is an extract from a letter to an agony aunt by a mother clearly being driven to distraction by here fears about population and climate in the year 2013:

“I love my family dearly, and my children bring me great joy.  So what’s the problem then? I worry that I’ve brought them into a world whose future holds overpopulation (for which I myself feel a bit responsible) and global warming. My children have such bright futures ahead, which may be completely devastated by these global crises.”

Example 2. Here is a father also driven to distraction by his imaginings in 2013:

“When Ian Kim imagines the world his 7-year-old daughter will be living in 20 years from now, he says, it keeps him up at night. Images of ever more frequent super storms like Sandy, along with rising seas, or drought and heat waves wreaking havoc with crops haunt his waking hours.”

Example 3.  Anotherletter to an agony aunt in 2013, one that comes across as more temperate until she gets to the bit about going up in flames:

“My issue is that now that we have a baby, all the other moms drive their kids all over the place, shopping and taking cute little day trips. I would prefer to drive only in emergencies, but our entertainment options near home are severely limited. Is it better to leave a smaller carbon footprint and make a moral statement my son might be proud of one day, or to have additional experiences with him/relationships with kids and moms across town that I will treasure until we all go up in flames?”

Example 4.  Unicef has, like so many other organisations, enthusiastically jumped on the climate alarm bandwagon and has no doubt boosted its funding as a result.  Here are the words of an actor doing a promotion for them in 2013:

“As a dad to a 14 year old daughter, I worry about what climate change means for her future and her children’s future. Extreme flooding, colder, longer winters and harsher summers; it’s causing chaos in the developed world and it’s threatening children’s very survival in poorer countries.”

For Some Parents It is Even More Serious

Example 5.  It is only anecdotal, and it comes via another woman who is herself seriously disturbed by climate scares, but it is sadly by no means far-fetched as the next example shows: “Should we stockpile cyanide? You think I'm exaggerating, but a close friend of mine, who has four children, said she plans to kill herself and them when it comes to it.”  [The ‘it’ refers to some kind of climate catastrophe she has in mind] 

Example 6.  April, 2010: “BUENOS AIRES – A 7-month-old baby survived alone for three days with a bullet wound in its chest beside the bodies of its parents and brother, who died in an apparent suicide pact brought on by the couple’s terror of global warming, the Argentine press said Saturday.”  As reported in Latin American Herald Tribune and the Daily Telegraph

Meanwhile ...

Meanwhile 1, the UK Met Office, a leading light for climate alarmists everywhere, has held an unscheduled get-together to see how they can best cope with the fact that the climate system is behaving just as it might if the extra CO2 was having a negligible impact on it.  Given how misleading their computer models have been for them, they need to brainstorm to help them cope with ‘weather as normal’.

Meanwhile 2,  the eco-organisations and others who have all helped disseminate the fears which have so disturbed parents and children, continue to harm the environment and force needless suffering and even starvation on to the world.

 These two 'meanwhiles' illustrate two realities.  The first reality is that the climate system is behaving much as it might if human impacts on it have been of minor consequence.  The second reality is that those who screech and preach and politicise as if the opposite was the case, are themselves the major cause of concern and of suffering linked to climate change.

As Willis Eschenbach noted yesterday at WUWT:

"I say that history will not look kindly on those people and organizations who are currently impoverishing the poor and damaging the environment in a futile fight against CO2, even if the perpetrators are wealthy and melanin-deficient and just running over with oodles of good intentions …"

And in the big meantime before that happier day, we are faced with trying to stop that 'futile fight' and all the harm it is bringing to people and to the environment across the world.

Added 31 July 2013:  Another example of the harm inflicted by climate alarmism on vulnerable people, a commenter driven to despair by sites such as Climate Progress:  http://www.np.reddit.com/r/SuicideWatch/comments/1ipxal/i_dont_see_the_point_of_building_a_future_for/

Good News: CO2-based climate alarm is humbug. Bad News: that humbug is still being promoted in schools.

Even as the case for alarm over CO2 is being shredded by experts and by Mother Nature herself, new ways are being sought to push that alarm into schoolchildren.  Here is one being funded by the EU this year:

“The Institute of Education at the University of Reading is welcoming more than 300 school children for an exciting and innovative programme of climate change activities which combine science, maths, history and modern languages.”

The insinuation that carbon dioxide released by human actions is a major driver of climate change is a shibboleth of some standing in political and educational circles.  The EU in particular has seized upon it, despite the harm such beliefs have already brought to European countries.

Climate dogma from the EU

 “Climate change is happening now: temperatures are rising, rainfall patterns are shifting, glaciers and snow are melting, and the global mean sea level is rising. We expect that these changes will continue, and that extreme weather events resulting in hazards such as floods and droughts will become more frequent and intense.” 

 Source: European Environment Agency

Let us examine each phrase in sequence:

“Climate change is happening now:”   This statement has been true since the Earth had an atmosphere.  Our climate varies on all relevant space and time scales.  The remark, in other words, is a platitude.

“temperatures are rising,”   No doubt, somewhere they are, and somewhere they are not. They never stay the same anywhere over any time period.  Estimates of global mean temperatures show two similar periods with rising trends in the 20th C,  a period of relative cooling in between, and more recently a flattening out.

“rainfall patterns are shifting,”   They always do – they are part of the variability in our climate system.  For scientific studies showing that recently observed changes do not match those promoted by climate alarmists, see CO2 Science's subsection on precipitation. For example:

 “Australian researchers report discovering that "on average, dry regions/months became wetter and wet regions/months became drier over the 1940-2009 period," and they say that "this conclusion holds in all available databases and also holds for 1940-1999." In addition, they further remark that the patterns observed "show no relationship to local or global changes in temperature," and that "if anything, these results constitute a slight decline in meteorological drought over the last 70 ears."

“glaciers and snow are melting,”   Of course they are.  They do this every year.  But nothing much by way of systematic change can be seen in data on snow coverage, and the major ice mass in Antarctica continues to grow as found, for example, in this study: 

“At this point in time, however, we can safely conclude that the climate-alarmist claim of dramatic global flooding of earth's coastal areas in response to the melting of polar ice due to global warming has been thoroughly discredited, for during the period of time that they claim the planet experienced the warmest temperatures of the past two millennia, Antarctica experienced a net buildup of ice that actually removed water from earth's seas.” 

“and the global mean sea level is rising.”   It has been on a slow rising trend for the past 150 years, well before the marked rise in CO2 levels of recent decades. This is a surprisingly complex area since sea level variations differ appreciably by location as well as by time.  Here is an example of a study expressing some of the complexities:
“With respect to the results of their analysis, Jevrejeva et al. say their findings show that "global sea level rise is irregular and varies greatly over time," noting that "it is apparent that rates in the 1920-1945 period are likely to be as large as today's." In addition, they report that their "global sea level trend estimate of 2.4 ± 1.0 mm/yr for the period from 1993 to 2000 matches the 2.6 ± 0.7 mm/yr sea level rise found from TOPEX/Poseidon altimeter data."

With respect to what Jevrejeva et al. describe as "the discussion on whether sea level rise is accelerating," their results pretty much answer the question in the negative; and in further support of this conclusion, they note that "Church et al. (2004) pointed out that with decadal variability in the computed global mean sea level, it is not possible to detect a significant increase in the rate of sea level rise over the period 1950-2000," as is clearly evident from the bottom portion of the above figure[shown here on the left].”

“We expect that these changes will continue,”  There will certainly continue to be changes.  That is merely another platitude.  If they are instead expecting recent trends to continue, they presumably expect cooler temperatures, reduced hurricane activity, more greening of the Sahara, improved crop yields in India and China, further reduction in the rate of sea level rise, further increases in the polar bear population, increased ice mass, more snow in the northern hemisphere and so on.  These trends are not the friends of the climate dogmatists.

“and that extreme weather events resulting in hazards such as floods and droughts will become more frequent and intense.”   They have not done so far, and there are good grounds to believe that they would be worse in a cooler climate than in a warmer one.  Here is some informed commentary on the matter:

“In spite of all the media hype about the rising economic impact of each new year's normal share of weather and climate extremes (which many insurance companies love to hype as well), there is really nothing unusual about the weather and climate extremes themselves.  Consequently, if the globe truly is warming (for whatever reason), it must therefore be concluded, on the basis of this empirical evidence, that warming does not bring an increase in extreme weather or climate events.  And if this be true, which it is, where are all the catastrophic consequences we are regularly told must assuredly follow increasing global temperatures?  Like the emperor's new clothes, they're just not there.”

Climate outreach funded by the EU in schools

The above example of EU propaganda does not bode well for the content of anything they would willingly fund about climate for our schools.  Here is more about the Reading University initiative which has been been funded by the EU (hat-tip Tom Nelson):

'Over the 3 week  programme, which began on the 3rd June, students aged between 9 and 15 are debating, experimenting and interacting to learn about the history of climate change, the main causes, and the overall impacts that climate change might have on them and the wider world.

Be Afraid Ye Little One!

The activities see children working in teams with coloured balls to simulate the way that carbon moves between atmosphere, ocean and plants in the carbon cycle. Washing up liquid bubbles filled with methane are exploding in a burst of brilliant yellow flame to give a dramatic demonstration of the amount of energy in fossil fuels (all within Health and Safety – of course). 

John Oversby, leader of the EU Changing with the Climate Project, says: “This unique collaboration between outstanding teachers at the start of their careers is a shining example of the kind of creativity and innovation in education that we encourage at the Institute.”

But what of the substantial content of this programme?  We can learn about it here in a progress report in 2012 coordinated by Oversby himself.  Here is an extract from the Executive Summary, and it reveals this as just another effort to produce 'little climate activists':

'The impact of global warming arises primarily from our usage of fossil fuel at local level such as in heating our homes or providing our transport as a by-product of their combustion is carbon dioxide. It is this gas together with other greenhouse gases which congregate in the upper atmosphere and by absorbing some of the earth’s radiation, results in global warming. Consequently changing with the climate is likely to be the defining global concern of the 21st Century. The world is likely to build so many fossil-fueled power stations, energy guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the chance of combating dangerous climate change will be lost forever. 

This network has therefore been initiated to link students in both primary and secondary schools across Europe to discuss, engage and commit to undertake actions to limit the change in climate. 

The network comprises schools and teachers in six European countries willing to include climate change topics and issues within their school lessons. With the support of the network partners and associate members, this will result in a deeper understanding of a global concern and lead to actions which will initiate the transition to a more sustainable use of energy.'

More background on this shameless indoctrination can be found in the report itself, and here: http://www.changingwithclimate.info/

What is to be done about the dogma?

In an excellent article published a few days ago (hat-tip Greenie Watch), and well worth reading for further support to the perspective being made in this post, Paul Driessen concludes as follows:

‘We need to save our environment from environmentalists and EPA - and safeguard our liberties, living standards and lives against the arrogance of too-powerful politicians and bureaucrats. How we achieve this, while protecting our lives and environment from real risks, is one of the greatest challenges we face.’

 To modify this for the context of this post, I would use ‘the EU’ instead of the EPA, and I would add ‘children’ to the list of what we need to safeguard.

Our climate dogmatists can be refuted by Mother Nature.  Already it is the case that no child in school has experienced a world with ‘global warming’ in their lifetime.  Further warming may of course resume, and if it does, no doubt a big deal will be made of it – a deal far bigger, far far bigger than the ‘deal’ being made about the modest cooling we have seen in recent years.  Given the harm that lower temperatures can bring, it seems harsh to wish for the downward trend to continue for a few more years.  But what more effective way is there to rid the political world, and then the educational one, of the hideous dogma of CO2-driven alarmism?

Background Briefing for Teachers of Climate Studies: 10 Reasons why Man-Made Global Warming is Wrong.

 Re-blogged from http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/man-made-global-warming-wrong-ten.html

Man-Made Global Warming WRONG - The Ten Reasons.

10 Reasons why Man-Made Global Warming is Wrong.

by COHENITE

1 Temperature

CO2 emissions by humans are supposed to increase the temperature; that is the basic point of man-made global warming [AGW]. The more CO2 in the atmosphere the hotter it should get. That is a basic AGW prediction. It is isn’t happening. Walter Brozek analyses the official temperature data from all the main sources including the satellites. Brozek uses 2 criteria; the first from NOAA to test for flatness or zero warming; the second from Dr Phil Jones to test for no statistical warming; the 2 criteria overlap with the second allowing for some slight warming and the first for even cooling. The first shows zero temperature for 15 years; the second for up to 23 years. The first is climatically significant by NOAA standards, the second by Dr Santer’s standards. This means the temperature is not being caused by AGW. The only line going up is CO2:

Link available HERE,

2 Models. 

AGW science is based on modelling which in turn is based on certain assumptions about the effect on climate of various factors such as CO2. This effect is expressed as a forcing and can be seen at the IPCC website. Note how the forcing expected from CO2 is nearly 20 times greater than from the sun. Predictions about how these forcings will determine temperature have been around for a long time and can therefore be checked. Roy Spencer has checked the model predictions against the temperature in the Troposphere: 

Roy Spencer Graph.

Some will say Roy’s comparison only shows the models can’t predict the Troposphere. But as Bob Tisdale shows the models also can’t predict sea surface temperatures,  land and sea surface temperatures, or precipitation. Nor can they, as Koutsoyiannis showed, predict the past.

3 The sun (1).

 AGW science says the sun has little effect on temperature compared with CO2 forcing. Dr Ka-Kit Tung disagrees and has compared the long-term solar record with the longest temperature record on the planet, the Central England Temperature [CET]. The final image in Tung’s slide presentation is revealing and shows a remarkable correlation between the CET record and Total Solar Irradiation [TSI]. This correlation between temperature and TSI has also been derived in 2 other studies. The first is by Glassman at Figure 1 where he uses global HADCRUT3 data. The second is by Stockwell at Figures 4-7 where all the major land-based temperature indices are shown to correlate with TSI using his model. Stockwell’s model is simply that temperature responds to TSI mean with the rate of temperature increase/decline determined by the movement away from the mean.

4 The sun (2). 

A new study from Spain, the home of solar power and national bankruptcy, shows how variations in solar radiation correlate well with temperature without any need for AGW. The increase is due to cloud variation. Of course Monckton was on top of the role of clouds and temperature when he debated Tim Lambert  - and Lambert sprung that infamous ambush about Pinker being a woman not a man. What was overlooked was the fact that Monckton was correct. Pinker et al had found that solar forcing through cloud variation was sufficient to explain all the temperature increase from the 1980’s onwards. This should come as no surprise really because it is exactly what the IPCC in TAR had found too.

5 The sun (3). 

Hood et al’s 2013 paper shows how slight variations in TSI have an amplified effect on the ocean, land and stratosphere. This amplification occurs or begins regionally and can produce seemingly contradictory results such as the ‘warming’ Arctic and a freezing Europe which the AGW supporters are saying is merely how AGW works. Of course this is the complete opposite of what the AGW supporters used to say. Who can forget Dr Viner predicting an end to winter snow in the Northern Hemisphere generally and particularly in England? NASA’s Drew Shindell noticed this solar amplification back in 2002; Shindell said:

“In our simulations, we find that the reduced brightness of the Sun during the Maunder Minimum causes global average surface temperature changes of only a few tenths of a degree, in line with the small change in solar output. However, regional cooling over Europe and North America is 5-10 times larger due to a shift in atmospheric winds."

And:

“So a reduction in the amount of sunlight reaching the planet leads to a weaker equator-to-pole heating difference, and therefore slower winds. The effect on surface temperatures is particularly large in winter. Because the oceans are relatively warm during the winter due to their large heat storage, the diminished flow creates a cold-land/warm-ocean pattern (Figure 3) by reducing the transport of warm oceanic air to the continents, and vice-versa.”

6 The Moon. 

In Tom Cruise’s latest movie, Oblivion, aliens conquer the Earth by destroying the Moon and creating climatic havoc. Ian Wilson is probably entitled to a script credit. Wilson and his co-author, Nikolay Sidorenkov’s latest paper looks at how the Lunar cycles have major impacts on the Earth’s climate. This is intuitive since the Moon has such a pronounced effect on the oceans; it is reasonable to suppose it has an equal effect on the atmosphere. Jo’s analysis reduces Wilson and Sidorenkov’s complex paper to a satisfying layman’s level.

7 Aerosols. 

These minute particles can be part of volcanic eruptions and be produced by industrial processes. Their effect on climate is complex and suspected of causing both warming and cooling. Their most spectacular effect was on the Ozone layer which protects the Earth from the sun’s worst radiation. Now professor Qing-Bin Lu, former Newcastle university student has done a comprehensive analysis of the effect of aerosols on climate.

Lu’s paper analyses the relative contributions of CO2 and various other factors including cosmic rays (CRs), total solar irradiance, sunspot number, halogenated gases (CFCs, CCl₄ and HCFCs) and total O_3.  Lu uses comprehensive measured datasets of quantities of all the factors and concludes: “For global climate change, in-depth analyses of the observed data clearly show that the solar effect and human-made halogenated gases played the dominant role in Earth's climate change prior to and after 1970, respectively.”

This is a remarkable repudiation of AGW. Equally remarkable was the response of leading AGW scientist David Karoly when interviewed on the ABC. It was plain Karoly had not even read the paper.

8 Water. 

Earth. Look at it. It’s all clouds, oceans and ice. In a neglected paper Ferguson and Veizer compared the water and CO2 cycle and found the CO2 cycle was a subordinate process. The AGW position is put by Lacis et al. who say that non-condensing gases, mainly CO2, are the Earth’s thermostat or “control knob”.  The reason for this is that CO2 stays longer in the atmosphere. This is a flawed view because CO2 is constrained by basic laws like Beer-Lambert which limit its radiative effect. In fact it is the condensation process which enables water to change its state from liquid/gas/ice which is the major contributor to atmospheric energy. A new paper by Makarieva et al finds this condensation process of water lowers atmospheric pressure. That atmospheric pressure should drop with condensation is contrary to AGW modelling. There are 2 issues flowing from this; the first is whether Makarieva is correct about condensation caused pressure drop and secondly whether that effect influences the impact of AGW. In respect of the first the issue is discussed between Makarieva and Stigter and Meesters. Useful discussions are also to be found at Jeff Condon and Jo Nova where the main protagonists, for and against, participate. Meesters main point is that is while condensation removes water from the vapor body the process of condensation heats the remaining vapor and causes a rise in pressure. This is wrong, as blogger voxUnius notes:

“Condensation heats the air parcel and hence causes faster molecular motion, expansion of the air parcel, decreased density and a decrease in pressure. That's how convective clouds work. The air inside the cloud is hotter, hence less dense, hence has less pressure than the air at the same altitude immediately outside the cloud where condensation is not taking place. This causes the simple mechanics of atmospheric convection. So-called hot air rises.”

The significance of decreased pressure profoundly contradicts AGW; with decreased pressure there can be no THS, a vital prediction of AGW. The pressure drop also confirms that even if AGW exists it is a minor player of no consequence. The Lacis paper on behalf of AGW wants us to believe the non-condensing greenhouse gases control the earth’s temperature and disaster will occur because of a 3.7 W/m2 forcing over the next 100 years or so. But this minute forcing is dwarfed by evaporating/condensing water which generates energy fluxes from Ldq and PdV [equations 1 to 3] that well exceed 1000 W/m2 each and every day. Small variations in those fluxes, such as cloud cover or levels of humidity make AGW forcing, if it is right, insignificant.

9 Carbon Dioxide (CO2). 

The basic issue of whether humans are responsible for all the increase in atmospheric CO2 has been looked at before. If CO2 increase is not due to human emissions then it is irrelevant if the claimed effect of CO2 on climate is true or not. Professor Murray Salby has given a comprehensive presentation on why the increase in CO2 is most likely due to natural emissions. CO2 follows temperature and the sun has warmed the Earth from 1850 up to the end of the 20thC thus providing the temperature cause to a natural CO2 increase. Salby addresses the mass balance argument [MB] which supposedly proves the CO2 increase is due to human emissions because the increase in CO2 is less than the human emissions. The MB cannot be right because the highest concentrations of CO2 are in non-industrialised areas such as the Amazon, key elements of the MB such as natural sinks and emissions are unknown and the correlation between temperature [and therefore natural emissions] is very high while there is little correlation between CO2 increase and human emissions.

10 Angry summer. 

Some hot temperatures and some particular site records during the summer of 2012-2013 were hailed as proof of AGW. The defects of these claims has been looked at. One point remains to be made. The Bureau of Meteorology [BOM] temperature record was the basis of these claims of a record hot or “Angry summer”. The BOM’s record is ground based. A comparison of the satellite temperature record is instructive:

These facts speak for themselves and should be front page news. They are not. That fact should also be front page news. 
----------end of re-blogged article-------------------------------------

This article has also be re-blogged at The Hockey Schtick.  There are useful comments there, as well as on the original post by Cohenite at the No Carbon Tax Climate Skeptics Party of Australia blog.

The first graphic above is shown more vividly at the C3 blog, along with more useful commentary, e.g.

"Through a combination of yet barely identified and poorly understood earthly/solar/cosmic natural forces, via the newest research it is now becoming more appreciated by a growing legion of scientists that the climate responds in a non-linear and chaotic manner that simply overwhelms any CO2 trace gas influence during the short, medium and long-terms.
The IPCC et al. alarmists religiously deny the dominance of natural climate forces yet continue to mindlessly blame CO2 despite all objective evidence that at best, it has a weak, minor role in the world of climate outcomes."