'Oh no! The Snow!' Cool Athletes Tell Kids about their Hot Planet - Snow Getting Harder to Find Say Some.

The article headlined on the left appeared in Sports Illustrated for Kids, SIKids, in June this year.

Here is the sort of thing they are doing:

"Protect Our Winters partners with The North Face and Alliance For Climate Education to visit schools through their Hot Planet/Cool Athletes program. Protect Our Winters educates students about the issue, using an interactive presentation with stories from professional winter athletes to inspire kids to make a difference. Jones says that paying attention to little things in your day-to-day life can help the environment, too. For example, he limits his "carbon footprint" by buying locally grown food. And instead of using snowmobiles and helicopters to get up mountains, he hikes for his snowboarding adventures. "This is the planet you are inheriting" Jones says."

It seems that Jones had a bit of an epiphany: "After seeing resorts closed and areas that once had great jumps for snowboarding shut down due to insufficient snowfall, Jones realized that climate change was a crisis that needed to be addressed."

Here's another one featured in the article sharing her wisdom with the young:

"Gleich says that she's seen how climate change can pose an immediate danger to winter athletes. Over the past two winters, Utah has seen a lot less snow, making the snow pack lower. In turn, this makes mountains more prone to dangerous — and sometimes deadly — avalanches. Additionally, with less snow, there are more rocks that could injure skiers.

Avoiding the hazardous areas has also taken away some of the fun of the sport. "When you don't have that snow pack, you can't ski the rad peaks you want to ski," Gleich says. "It's a bummer to have to stay on the smaller mountains."

Now, here is some data for 1972 to 2016:

Notice the variability in snow extent. Notice the lack of any dramatic trend.  Notice the simple straight-line fit is rising gently.  [the original chart here was not appearing, and has been replaced by the one shown, copies from http://www.climate4you.com/ - JS, 8 Mar 17]

I hope that some day, somewhere, a child in some school targeted for one of these Hot Planet/Cool Athletes extravaganzas will circulate this sort of chart ahead of the visitors arriving with their propaganda kits.

Once again, a look at the data is enough.

Inch by inch, row by row
We can make the rascals go
All it takes is to look, don't you know
For their claims are so unsound.

(to the tune of the Garden Song)

Hat-tips: 
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/09/05/following-up-on-david-viners-expert-forecast/

http://tomnelson.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/climate-hoax-propaganda-for-kids-co2-is.html

Note added later: readers might find this collection of duff winter-forecasts by those who wish to alarm us about climate quite amusing, if it weren't for the reality that the people behind them have been very influential and therefore harmful to society: http://notrickszone.com/2013/04/04/climate-science-humiliated-earlier-model-prognoses-of-warmer-winters-now-todays-laughingstocks/

Note added 03 April 2014. The C3 site notes

Newest Climate Research: Snow Extent Unaffected By Human CO2 Emissions, Contrary To IPCC "Expert" Predictions

See: http://www.c3headlines.com/2014/04/climate-research-snow-extent-unaffected-co2-emissions-ipcc-expert-predictions-those-stubborn-facts.html

Note added 17 April 2014.  Much of North America has been enduring a very cold winter, with record levels of snow.  According to this report, for example, 5 of the snowiest winters on record in Detroit have occurred in the last 11 years: http://notrickszone.com/2014/04/16/bastardi-detroit-sets-all-time-record-snowy-winter-5-of-the-snowiest-winters-occurred-in-last-11-years/

Note added 15 September 2014.  The foolishness of Jones and Gleich is further illustrated with this plot:

Real Science

Note added 8 March 2017.  The general trend of Northern hemisphere snowfall continues upwards:  https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/03/07/winter-snow-extent-continues-rising-trend/
Note added 17 March 2017.  Another silly 10-year forecast bites the dust re snow in Vermont: http://notrickszone.com/2017/03/17/shumlins-folly-burlington-buried-by-record-30-of-snow-vermont-gov-warned-end-of-skiing-in-2007/
Note added 08 May 2018.  More confirmation of the shallow, opportunistic, fatuous, ill-founded, irresponsible snow-alarmism: https://realclimatescience.com/2018/05/climate-scientists-versus-science/   An apt conclusion at the end: 'Most climate science is based around a superstition that CO2 controls the climate. It is one of the stupidest group think episodes in science history.'
Note Added 19 February 2019  The insanity is still with us in snowsports: 'A group of winter-sports athletes and the world’s biggest snowboard maker want the president of the International Ski Federation to resign after he spoke of “so-called climate change” and said he would rather deal with dictators than argue with environmentalists.

The climate advocacy group Protect Our Winters sent an open letter Friday urging 75-year-old Gian-Franco Kasper to step aside.'

http://www.climatedepot.com/2019/02/10/ski-chief-urged-to-quit-over-skeptical-climate-comment/

Note added 07 June 2019.  Snow on snow:   https://climatism.blog/2019/06/01/global-warming-fail-record-snow-when-you-were-assured-by-climate-scientists-that-there-would-be-none/

Conversation Pieces for the Climate Classroom Wall

Dramatically rising sea level is one of the Big Scares pushed at children to get them suitably conditioned about the C in CAGW (catastrophic anthropogenic global warming).  The cause is of course put down to the presumed dramatic effects of rising CO2 levels in the 2nd half of the 20th century, and their continued rise expected in the 21st.

These rises are held, by some, to be causing extraordinary rises in global mean temperature, as repeatedly implied for example by the IPCC's extensive use of the notorious Hockey Stick Plot in and around their 2001 AR3 report.   (For details of the sloppy nature of the work that produced this plot, and of the conniving that brought it to prominence, see 'The Hockey Stick Illusion'.)

But today, let us look at two other graphics recently highlighted at WUWT that could encourage both children and adults to develop a calmer perspective on climate change, and to be more more alert to the grossly irresponsible scaremongering that can be so readily found in this area.

(1) Our first graphic is a teaser. There was an overall rise in estimated global mean temperature in the 20th century, but the rising phase in the first half was remarkably similar in size and duration to that in the second half.  Cutting and pasting these phases to show them side by side on the same scale makes this quite clear, and is shown below.  In one we are told that 'natural causes' can account for the rise.  In the other we are told that only rising CO2 levels can explain it.  The observer is invited to guess which one is which:

Source: this graphic is presented here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/20/when-somebody-hits-you-with-that-new-ipcc-is-95-certain-talking-point-show-them-this/#more-91971 . (The C3 site also has many relevant plots, including one used in an earlier post on Climate Lessons.) (Note added 18 Sep 2013: the graphic is due to Richard Lindzen, Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons Volume 18 Number 3 Fall 2013)

(2) Our second graphic is also a teaser, but of a different kind.  The observer is invited to speculate as to the intentions of those who prepared it and of those who authorised it for use on the cover of the September 2013 issue of National Geographic magazine.  What were they thinking?  Do they want to frighten us by any chance?  Do they presume we are innumerate?  Do they think that most of us will fail to check it out?  Was it a grossly irresponsible action on their part to publish it?  What kind of standards do they have?  And so on:

Anthony Watts estimates the water height shown is about 214 feet above mean sea level.  There is a sea-level measuring station nearby showing that sea level there has been rising at a pretty steady 0.0091 feet per year over the last 150 years or so:

Source: NOAA

He drily notes that at that rate, it will take about 23,500 years to reach the water height shown. 

But what about projected rates for the oceans overall?  What does the IPCC say?   Their projections from the AR4 report in 2007 show between 20cm and 50cm rise in the 21stC.  Let us once again do a naive projection of that into the future to see what kind of time we'd have to wait before the waters were reaching towards the waistline of the statue: 2,720 to 1,090 years if the local sea level there changed at those global rates..

Sea level is a surprisingly difficult thing to define and measure, but one thing is clear - we are not competent to forecast reliably its behaviour over anything like these timescales of a thousand years or more.   One recent study by one of the world's leading experts suggests that 'Best estimates for future sea level changes up to the year 2100 are in the range of +5 cm ±15 cm.'  Note well that this range includes both zero, and sea level decreases.  He is not sure that there will even be a rise.

The National Geographic cover is therefore nothing but an extremely wild, and extremely implausible speculation.  As Watts notes at the end of his post on this:

'It is this sort of junk science sensationalism that causes me and many others not to subscribe to National Geographic anymore. '

Teachers everywhere should be on the lookout for such 'junk science sensationalism' in the teaching materials they are being asked to use on climate.  Please also consider sending me details of any examples that you find if you would like them to be recorded here.

Note added 22 August 2013.  The NoTricksZone blog notes the ignorance and stupidity of the National Geographic cover, and recalls Der Spiegel doing something similar 27 years ago.They note that since then, some sense has got through to the editors of that magazine: 'Spiegel has long since cranked back its global warming alarmism, and even occasionally publishes articles critical of climate alarmism claiming even 1 meter of sea level rise by 2100.'

See: http://notrickszone.com/2013/08/22/national-geographic-scores-own-goal-pathetically-rehashes-27-year-old-spiegel-cover-hyperbole-trick/

Note added 25 September 2013.  Don Easterbrook has examined more assertions in the despicable article behind that despicable picture in the National Geographic.  He concludes 'Summary of conclusions: From the evidence presented above, the obvious conclusion is that the National Geographic article is an absurd fairytale, completely unsupported by any real scientific data and directly contrary to a mountain of contrary evidence.' http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/25/national-geographic-rising-sea-level-prophecycause-for-concern-or-absurd-fairytale/

Green Bullies: frightening children is what they do

Is there any precedent for the childhood sacrifice being imposed on children by green fanatics?  Some are intent on spreading depression and dismay on to them while they are still at school.  Not only do they mislead them about the state of the world and of science, they also spread alarm.  If they are successful, this is what they will produce: ill-informed,  frightened children with dismal views of the future.  Ideal supporters-to-be for green causes on the one hand, but damaged victims of hyperbole and facile scaremongering on the other.

Here is a recent example from Australia (hat-tip Spiel Climate): 

Extract from this article by Tony Thomas (bold added):

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'The best alarmist entry won $20,000 for Melbourne Girls College for school environmental projects, and the student won a $5000 study grant. The second prize was $12,500/$2500, to MLC, and the third prize of $8500/$1500 went to to Laverton P-12 College.

I do not, of course, begrudge the students their prizes for their talented art efforts. My complaints concern their elders, who see nothing wrong in indoctrinating kids with CO2 doomsterism. Student entrants were required to do an artwork on The Impact of Ocean Acidification and pen 100-word essays about their “inspiration”. It’s vicious, however well-meant, to blight kids’ optimism, as The Alliance’s does with its slogan, “Imagine losing all this colour and life”. 

The idea that a student should objectively survey the scientific controversies on this topic was unthinkable. Imagine an entry headed: “Probably not much CO2 impact”. The desired apocalyptic tone is captured in these briefing notes from the Alliance:

“The world's leading marine scientists are warning us that our current rates of carbon emissions are making our oceans more acidic. This is happening so fast that it poses a serious threat to biodiversity and marine life.

“Left unchecked, Ocean Acidification could destroy all our coral reefs by as early as 2050. It also has the potential to disrupt other ocean ecosystems, fisheries, habitats, and even entire oceanic food chains.,,

There are approximately 10,000 Coral Reefs and we are destroying one every other day...Left unchecked Ocean Acidification could trigger a Great Mass Extinction Event...

Greenhouse Gas Emissions must be cut dramatically by 2050 if Coral Reefs are to have any chance of surviving the next 50 years...”  '

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The reality of course is that the oceans are alkaline, and will remain so even under the projected and imagined impacts.  The terminology of 'acidification' no doubt delights the propagandists because it has more scary overtones than talking about reductions in alkalinity.   But like the even more misleading term 'greenhouse effect', the use of 'acidification' is also widely used in scientific literature and is not likely to be replaced any time soon.

To get an idea of the one-sided view promoted for this brainwashing exercise, one can visit the invaluable CO2 Science website and its Subject Index.  There are many relevant entries under Ocean Acidification,  and under Calcification (Corals), all to research published in the science literature.  Let me reproduce some extracts here merely to make the point that it is by no means established that rising CO2 levels are a serious threat to marine life in general and corals in particular:

(1)  Loaiciga, H.A. 2006. Modern-age buildup of CO2 and its effects on seawater acidity and salinity. Geophysical Research Letters 33: 10.1029/2006GL026305.

    ' Loaiciga concludes that "on a global scale and over the time scales considered (hundreds of years), there would not be accentuated changes in either seawater salinity or acidity from the rising concentration of atmospheric CO2." Hence, any changes that might occur would have little to no negative biological ramifications, as we have reported repeatedly in Journal Reviews archived under Coral Reefs (Calcification) in our Subject Index.'

(2) Pelejero, C., Calvo, E., McCulloch, M.T., Marshall, J.F., Gagan, M.K., Lough, J.M. and Opdyke, B.N.  2005.  Preindustrial to modern interdecadal variability in coral reef pH.  Science 309: 2204-2207.

   ' Contrary to climate-alarmist claims that historical anthropogenic CO2 emissions have already resulted in a significant decline in ocean water pH and aragonite saturation state, Pelejero et al.'s 300-year record of these parameters (which, in their words, began "well before the start of the Industrial Revolution") provides no evidence of such a decline.  In addition, and also contrary to what one would expect from climate-alarmist claims of how sensitive coral calcification rate is to changes in pH and aragonite saturation state, they found that huge cyclical changes in these parameters had essentially no detectable effect on either coral calcification or skeletal extension rates. '

(3) Ries, J.B., Cohen, A.L. and McCorkle, D.C. 2010. A nonlinear calcification response to CO2-induced ocean acidification by the coral Oculina arbuscula. Coral Reefs 29: 661-674.

'The three researchers, in their words, "propose that the apparent insensitivity of calcification and linear extension within O. arbuscula to reductions in ΩA from 2.6 to 1.6 reflects the corals' ability to manipulate the carbonate chemistry at their site of calcification." And it would further appear that that ability should serve the corals well, no matter how much fossil fuel is burned before various non-CO2-producing forms of energy generation become sufficiently developed to supply the bulk of the world's energy needs.'

This glimpse into the complexities of the science serves to highlight just how irresponsible and malevolent is the singling-out and promotion to children of exclusively alarmist claims in this area.  

Note added 18 Sep 2013.  Tony Thomas has written several other penetrating articles on climate matters.  See: http://tthomas061.wordpress.com/category/climate-unfrocked/

The Augean Stables of Climate Materials for Schools - an example from the teaching of English language in Germany

So many people have been duped by climate dogma which insists on catastrophic effects from rising CO2 that signs of it appear in all sorts of places.  It can of course be found in geography and popular science books for children, and in many websites, but it can also be found in language lessons.  I myself came across it while studying French.  Here is an example from a textbook used for teaching English in high schools in Germany, well-annotated by critical observers from the policy think-tank KE Research:

Source: http://www.ke-research.de/downloads/Greenhouse.pdf

Their conclusions are: 

# “Greenhouse gases” and clouds continuously radiate energy into outer space. Thereby they cool the atmosphere. This enables the atmosphere to cool the ground. This has been going on over billions of years.

#  Since IR active gases cool the Earth (at least indirectly), an increase in their concentration cannot cause a raise of temperatures. This constitutes a disproof of the CO2 warming hypothesis (yellow block in the “Green Tower” in fig. 1).

# All further claims of the climate dogma (computerized climate prophecy, apocalyptic consequences, need of political action and “climate protection”) would only make sense if the CO2 warming hypothesis is proven. But as the hypothesis is demonstrated invalid by our comparison with the Moon, the claims derived from it as well as the actions suggested make no sense. The entire CO2-based “climate research” proves to be pseudo science – or charlatanism.

# In certain countries, public education is misused by governments to implant fears in the brains of students – being the result of a wrongly built understanding of nature.

This is right at the heart of the debate, or rather it ought to be.  Instead these are amongst the so-called ‘sceptical’ views that are often ridiculed or ignored.  But the basic assertion that radiation in infra-red from the atmosphere to space is an important component of Earth’s cooling mechanism is correct.  Their second point is far more contentious.  It is not clear to me what the overall, or net effect of CO2 in the climate system is.  I can also go along with a modest warming contribution of CO2 thanks to it delaying heat loss from the surface to space by absorbing Earth radiation (in the relevant narrow bands for CO2) before re-emitting it in all directions.  Simple calculations suggest a value of the order of 1C for this warming for every doubling of ambient CO2 levels.  One day, perhaps we shall see computer modelling of CO2 in the climate system.  We do not have that at present.  Instead the GCMs have proven to be a rather expensive way of confirming that when you suppress heat loss from an exernally heated object, that object’s temperature will, all else being equal, rise.  This is done in the models by imposing an instantaneous drop in radiative heat loss at the outer edge of the atmosphere for a given increase in ambient CO2.  This paper by KE Research is one which suggests that the role of CO2 is more complicated than that.  The current GCMs cannot help resolve this since they work from a presumed net effect of CO2, i.e. they incorporate a conclusion rather than discover it from the model runs.

Hat-tip: http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/why-atmosphere-is-not-greenhouse.html (which also provides an extract from a new essay by Tim Ball on the greenhouse effect: http://drtimball.com/2013/a-greenhouse-as-analogy-for-the-atmosphere-is-completely-wrong/ )

There is also a recent post by Roy Spencer, with discussion in the comments on the same topic: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/08/does-a-greenhouse-operate-through-the-greenhouse-effect/

The extract from the paper does not show up very clearly in the image above, so here is a higher-definition version just of the textbook page:

Climate Control Freakery: a disturbed academic in Australia has his sights on the children

Writing on the Wall, or just the zealotry of someone disturbed out of all proportion by the talk of climate catastrophe?  It is shocking to note that this man is a lecturer in a university.  Here is what he has in mind for children:

5. Children

Hundreds of millions of children are already the victims of the worsening climate crisis and it is estimated that 6 billion under-5 year old infants will die avoidably this century due to unaddressed climate change. All children are acutely threatened by man-made climate change. Some ideas for climate action re children:

5.1 Carefully-designed, ethical, science-informed (e.g. Climate Commission-informed), clear summaries of the climate crisis and solutions should be provided to all primary school children as a booklet, book mark, and refrigerator magnet.

5.2 Carefully-designed, ethical, science-informed, clear summaries of the climate crisis and solutions should be provided to all secondary school children as a booklet, book mark, and refrigerator magnet.

5.3 Green apparel as a badge of environmental concern (children can declare themselves for their future; make every day St Patrick’s Day).

5.4 Carefully-designed, ethical, science-informed, clear summaries of the climate crisis and solutions should be provided to all parents, school teachers, clergy, sports coaches, music teachers and indeed all those involved with children activities.

5.5 Smart ways of explaining to children that we have just One Planet and that any species extinction is unacceptable.

5.6 Awards to children (from badges to books) for good works for the Biosphere.

5.7. Local, state, national and global awards for outstanding environmentalism by children.

5.8 Children must be ethically encouraged to boycott ecocidal and terracidal products and services.

5.9 Children should be ethically encouraged to ask what their elders are doing in the War on the Planet. and instructed about the terms intergenerational equity, intergenerational justice, intergenerational inequity and intergenerational injustice.

5.10 Climate activists must educate and mobilize children who have the time and energy to help save their world.

5.11 Children and young people in general instructed about intergenerational equity, intergenerational justice, intergenerational inequity and intergenerational injustice.

5.12 Just as a children were ethically instructed about the consequences of nuclear war in “When the wind blows” by Raymond Briggs (1982), so they should be similarly made aware of the consequences of climate change inaction


Perhaps if someone pointed out to him that there is no sign of a 'climate crisis' anywhere, let alone of 'the worsening climate crisis', it might help him understand that the crisis projected as a possibility by such as the IPCC is not due to arrive for many more decades.  Their alarm is based upon crude and inadequate computer models which have enjoyed a dismal track record to date, and which show little sign of real improvement despite the billions of dollars thrown at and around them for the past 20 years or more.

So far, this century and last, the climate has done nothing extraordinary.   But we have seen some extraordinary actions proposed for the control and manipulation of society.  Such as the above.

Hat-tip: Greenie Watch: http://antigreen.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/dotty-warmist-aiming-for-minds-of.html#links

PS It would make a good exercise for senior pupils to Fisk or otherwise comment on the implications of each point.

Learning about CO2 and climate? Here's a handy graphic to show how just how low the current levels of this vital gas are.

Source: http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/GeoCO2.png

For many more very smartly presented charts, with occasional other items such as press releases to add some context. click rightwards from here: http://s90.photobucket.com/user/dhm1353/media/Byrd0.png.html

Hat-tip: Tom Nelson

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