This is really Orwellian and scary

When marketing gets involved in Global Warming

Basically they're saying (like all marketing and advertising types) "We know it's all lies, but we can make everyone believe it anyway. And there's nothing you can do about it!"

Important research that will never reach the MSM

From CO2 Science (bold text in each section added)

Simulating the Past: A Test of State-of-the Art Climate Models

---

Reference
Lau, K.M., Shen, S.S.P., Kim, K.-M. and Wang, H. 2006. A multimodel study of the twentieth-century simulations of Sahel drought from the 1970s to 1990s. Journal of Geophysical Research 111: 10.1029/2005JD006281.

Background
The Sahel drought, which the authors describe as "one of the most pronounced signals of climate change with devastating impacts on society," is said by them to provide "an ideal test bed for evaluating the capability of CGCMs [coupled general circulation models] in simulating long-term drought, and the veracity of the models' representation of coupled atmosphere-ocean-land processes and their interactions."

What was done
Lau et al. "explore the roles of sea surface temperature coupling and land surface processes in producing the Sahel drought in CGCMs that participated in the twentieth-century coupled climate simulations of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change [IPCC] Assessment Report 4," in which the 19 CGCMs "are driven by combinations of realistic prescribed external forcing, including anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosols, long-term variation in solar radiation, and volcanic eruptions."

What was learned
The climate scientists found, in their words, that "only eight models produce a reasonable Sahel drought signal, seven models produce excessive rainfall over [the] Sahel during the observed drought period, and four models show no significant deviation from normal." In addition, they report that "even the model with the highest skill for the Sahel drought could only simulate the increasing trend of severe drought events but not the magnitude, nor the beginning time and duration of the events."

What it means
Since all 19 of the CGCMs employed in the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report failed to adequately simulate the basic characteristics of "one of the most pronounced signals of climate change" of the past century (the Sahel drought of the 1970s-90s, as defined by its start date, severity and duration), the results of this "ideal test" for evaluating the models' capacity for accurately simulating "long-term drought" and "coupled atmosphere-ocean-land processes and their interactions" would almost mandate that it would not be wise to rely on their output as a guide to the future, especially when the models were "driven by combinations of realistic prescribed external forcing" and they still could not properly simulate the past.

But climate modelers still insist that US and international policies should be driven by the predictions these models make AND we that should keep giving them public funds to keep running the things. Isn't the definition of madness doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?

It's really stupid out there today

Some headlines which would fully justify your decision to just stay in bed today.

From SFGate.com :

Feinstein unveils Dem plan to cut greenhouse gas

Are they all going to stop talking?

From the Japan Times

The fat, the starving, and global warming

Yes, we're all too fat now, but Global Warming will soon put a stop to it!

From the Telegraph :

One day we're told that something will help us live to 150, the next that it causes cancer in white mice

It took until 2006 for the Telegraph to figure this out?

From The Guardian :

Offset your carbon emissions with a text

If you give away enough money you won't feel guilty about your existance anymore.

From The Living Church:

National Cathedral to Welcome Former Iran President

The same guy who presided over things like this. And no, he hasn't repented or converted.

And finally, from Newsday:

Woman Crashes When Teaching Dog to Drive

At least she wasn't on a cell phone.

You just can't make this stuff up

McCain heads overseas to observe global warming effects

from the Business Journal of Phoenix

Arizona Sen. John McCain will visit Greenland, Turkey, Georgia, Montenegro and Italy as part of a Senate delegation headed overseas during Congress' summer break.

McCain and the other Republican senators want to observe the effects of global warming while in Greenland. They also will attend an A-list economic and political conference at a swanky northern Italian resort.

Why Greenland? Because there was a study by Krabill et al. (2000) which suggested that the Greenland ice sheet was thinning along the edges. It was immediately jumped on by the media as evidence of "global warming". Too bad it has been shown to be seriously flawed.

McCain and U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., favor legislation to cap industrial emissions in an effort to curtail global warming.

So I assume they will be swimming, walking, and maybe biking on this tour, not flying in private jets. And the "swanky northern Italian resort" was built entirely by hand without using any heavy machinery or removing any trees, isn't air conditioned or even electrified, will serve only locally grown organic food that doesn't have to be flown or trucked in, and is easily accessible via public transportation. And the senators are paying for all of this out of their own pockets. And monkeys will.................. never mind.

Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Mel Martinez, R-Fla., Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., Richard Burr, R-N.C., and John Sununu, R-N.H., are slated to go on the congressional trip with McCain. The Greenland to Italy trip will start later this month and run through early September, McCain's office said Wednesday.

McCain has been crisscrossing the U.S. in recent months campaigning for fellow Republicans in key races and will continue those efforts through the November elections.

It's OK to burn lots of fossil fuels when you're trying to get elected to high office. That doesn't really affect the environment because after you're elected you're going to cap industrial emissions and fix everything. It's all those evil power plants and middle class commuters who are destroying the planet.

The Arizonan is expected to run for president again in 2008 and is courting voters and key GOP supporters in battleground states such as Iowa, Florida, Ohio, South Carolina, New Hampshire and California.

I can tell him right now that he's not getting my vote.

Whether you're concerned with the bad science and politics behind "global warming", the genuinely lunatic and self-destructive politics of the Western Left, or the current state of denial almost everyone is in regarding Islam, you can't say much more than George Orwell already has:

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.

One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship.

Political chaos is connected with the decay of language... one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.

Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.

There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.

We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.

What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.

Thanks to Numberwatch.

Thank you, thank you, Dr. Bohren

An honest answer to a good question

From USA Today - The WonderQuest feature by April Holladay

Q: There seems to be a lot of political debate about if global warming is true or not. How can a non-scientific person sort out what the facts are and what is just an agenda? (Washington, DC)

A: Global warming is often defined as "the observed increase in the mean (average) temperature of the Earth's atmosphere and oceans in recent decades," which, unfortunately, leads to difficulties.

I am indebted to physicist and meteorologist Craig Bohren, distinguished professor emeritus at the Pennsylvania State University for sorting out problems, biases, and what objective answers that exist.

Bohren has no horse in the climate change debate: As a retired professor, he is not worried about losing or gaining funding based on his opinions. (an important point - CC)

This is his answer:

Discussion: First off, let me say I consider the concept of a global mean temperature [upon which global warming statistics are based] to be somewhat dubious, and I say so in my recent book (with Eugene Clothiaux) Fundamentals of Atmospheric Radiation. A single number cannot adequately capture climate change. This number, as I see it, is aimed mostly at politicians and journalists.

The issue of global warming is extremely complicated, and it transcends science. Views on global warming are as much determined by political and religious biases as by science. No one comes to the table about this issue without biases. So I'll state some of mine.

My biases: The pronouncements of climate modelers, who don't do experiments, don't make observations, don't even confect theories, but rather [in my opinion] play computer games using huge programs containing dozens of separate components the details of which they may be largely ignorant, don't move me. I am much more impressed by direct evidence: retreating glaciers, longer growing seasons, the migration of species, rising sea level, etc.

I have lived long enough to have seen many doomsday scenarios painted by people who profited by doing so, but which never came to pass. This has made me a skeptic. Perhaps global warming is an example of the old fable about the boy who cried wolf, but this time the doomsayers are, alas, right. Maybe, but I can't help noting that some of the prominent global warmers of today were global coolers of not so long ago. In particular, Steven Schneider, now at Stanford, previously at NCAR, about 30 years ago was sounding the alarm about an imminent ice age. The culprit then was particles belched into the atmosphere by human activities. No matter how the climate changes he can correctly say that he predicted it. No one in the atmospheric science community has been more successful at getting publicity. NCAR used to send my department clippings from newspaper and magazine articles in which NCAR researchers were named. We'd get thick wads of clippings, almost all of which were devoted to Schneider. Perhaps global warming is bad for the rest of us, but for Schneider and others it has been a godsend.

[snip]

Skeptics about global warming are often painted as hirelings of the oil and automotive industries. Such claims irritate me. I have never earned a nickel as a consequence of my skepticism. Indeed, I have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars by it. First, you have to understand how a large research university operates. The professors are expected to obtain research grants, and in the atmospheric sciences these grants come mostly from government agencies.

In the atmospheric sciences it is difficult to get grants unless you can somehow tie your work to global warming, that is to say, to scare science. Because of my reputation, I immodestly believe that I could have jumped onto the global warming bandwagon. But I refused to do so because I would have found this repugnant.

At some universities, professors get only a fraction of their salary from the university, the rest coming from contracts and grants. Research associates and research professors often must scrounge for 100% of their salaries.

Professors not only directly profit from their research grants (summer salaries), they also indirectly profit. If Professor X has grants amounting to millions of dollars, this gives him leverage. He wants more money so he threatens to leave and take his bags of money with him if he doesn't get a whopping raise. Or he plays one university off against another. He gets an offer from another university in order to pressure his present university to increase his salary. I have seen this done many times. The system of federal grants, which hardly existed before (World War II), has created a professoriate with greater allegiance to government agencies than to their universities.

Professors who get research money to work on aspects of global warming are not doing anything dishonest or illegal. This is not graft. But when it is in the best financial and career interests of professors to raise the alarm about global warming (or anything), we should be skeptical.

Perhaps some critics of global warming are in the pay of the oil and automotive companies. If so, they should be forthright about this. But so should folks on the other side of the debate. What fraction of their salaries comes from research on global warming?

Tell it, brother!

Now to the biases of others. It hardly comes as a surprise [to me] that the Wall Street Journal takes shots at global warming. Conservatives believe in unlimited growth, a consumer society that consumes more and more. Good for business. [It is my opinion that] the Bush White House is in the hands of oilmen who will never accept that burning oil could have any deleterious consequences....

Both political parties, liberals and conservatives, are to blame for the U.S. not having a rational energy policy.

Conservatives are correct in that a sudden decrease in the consumption of oil would have grave economic consequences. Like it or not, the U.S. economy (indeed the world economy) is based on readily available cheap oil. We as a nation made lots of bad decisions: cars instead of mass transport in cities, trucks instead of railroads, suburbs and so on. The food that almost everyone eats is transported long distances by trucks. We are no longer a nation of self-sufficient farmers. We depend on all kinds of networks of food, water, and power kept in operation mostly by burning fossil fuels.

Liberals have a curiously puritanical view of global warming. [They think, in my view, that] our contribution to it is evidence of our wickedness.

Stated simply (and probably unfairly), [I think] conservatives do not believe that global warming exists (because they don't want it to exist) whereas liberals believe in global warming (because they want it to exist).

And then there are religious biases. Certainly one means of mitigating the undesirable consequences of climate change, whatever its causes, would be population control. But [I believe] this is not acceptable to many religions.

[I think] some Christians seem to take the view that God cannot possibly let us destroy our planet, whereas others want us to perish because of our sinful ways. Some evangelical Christians seem to be eager for the end of the Earth.

Economists take a quite different view of global warming than do atmospheric scientists. Not long ago a group of prominent economists compiled a list of pressing problems for humanity. Global warming was near the bottom of the list, which outraged the "global warmers." But in the short run global warming surely must be of little concern to someone in Africa dying of AIDS or malaria or malnutrition. Or who doesn't have clean water, education, a job.

People in China, India, and Brazil, where the bulk of humanity lives, aspire to the same standard of living as those of us in the U.S. and Europe. No matter what we do, these other countries are going to consume more fossil fuels, and there isn't much we can do about it.

Fortunately [for me], I'll be dead before the consequences of global warming become dire, if indeed they do. But I would like to stick around long enough to see this drama played out.

In a nutshell:

This is about all Bohren thinks can be said rationally about global warming:

• The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been steadily increasing since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. This increase is most likely a consequence of increased burning of fossil fuels.
• Carbon dioxide is an infrared-active gas (I hate the term "greenhouse gas"), and hence all else being equal (an important qualification) we expect more downward infrared radiation (and a heating effect) from the atmosphere with an increase in carbon dioxide. The detailed consequences of this, however, are unknown and possibly unknowable. By consequences I mean length of growing season, distribution and amount of rain, distribution and amount of sunshine, etc. And the economic and social consequences are even more uncertain. However the climate changes, it is likely that some regions of the planet will gain, others will lose.
• Climate has changed in the past, and there is no reason to believe that it will not change in the future. After all, the last Ice Age ended only about 10,000 years ago, and it is fair to say that another Ice Age would be equally or more catastrophic for Earth than global warming.
• How much of the present climate change is a direct consequence of human activity is difficult to say with certainty.
• A prudent society would reduce its dependence on fossil fuels, especially oil, as quickly as possible for many reasons, not just the possibility of global warming. A prudent society would also develop drought-resistant crops and make other long-term plans for inevitable climate change of any kind
• At the present, there seems to be no alternative to central power generation than nuclear power. Fusion is pie-in-the-sky. We are not even close to fusion. Solar and wind and tidal power can help but are not panaceas. Conservation is desirable but probably not acceptable to many people. The advantages and disadvantages, costs and benefits of all schemes for power generation should be carefully assessed. A full and honest balance sheet is needed. No matter how power is generated, some people will die or be injured as a consequence. This is a fact of life. I worked on the construction of a large power plant (not nuclear) about 46 years ago in Pittsburg, California. It was taken as axiomatic that several workers would die in the construction of any power plant.
• Whatever the US and Europe do to mitigate consumption is likely to be negated by increased consumption in countries such as China, India, and Brazil.
• Those who advocate less consumption (in the US) should show the way by consuming less themselves.
• Because of the present large population of Earth and the existence of nation-states, mass migration of people is no longer a feasible response to climate change without wars on all scales.
• There is no simple solution to global warming given the disparate views of people of different religions, political views, and nationalities, as well of competition between different countries for resources.
• The concept of tradeoffs has to be firmly grasped by everyone, especially environmentalists, who whine about global warming and then hop in jet planes and fly 2000 miles to go skiing in the Rockies. The notion of "green" power generation is absurd. A network of wind turbines adequate to provide appreciable power would require staggering amounts of construction materials: steel, aluminum, concrete. The same is true for solar power and tidal power—and anything else.

At last, a rational answer to a question on global warming! Again, thank you, Dr. Bohren.

Scraping the bottom of the barrel for "experts"

From The Independent

Expert View: Global warming: 100 years of living dangerously

By Bill Robinson

Published: 06 August 2006

As we fly off for our holidays, with the memory of a record hot July still fresh in our minds, our thoughts turn to global warming. Is it happening? Will it be disastrous? What can be done to stop it or adjust to it?

Not many people now dispute that it is happening. Although variations in temperature are nothing new (the Romans made wine in northern Britain, Samuel Pepys recorded oxen roasted on the frozen Thames), the speed and size of the increase in the global average temperature in recent times is unprecedented. Moreover, it is readily explained by the greenhouse effect, which is a long-established piece of 19th-century science. Layers of gas allow the sun's rays in but bounce back the sun's reflected rays. So the atmosphere warms up, just like the air in a greenhouse, where glass plays the same role. The industrial revolution has put in place additional layers of greenhouse gases, and this explains the sharp rise in global temperatures.

There are many greenhouse gases but the contemporary focus is on carbon dioxide, which is a by-product of burning fossil fuels. CO₂ is not the most damaging greenhouse gas but it is the most plentiful and increasingly so. So we know (A) that the earth has got warmer, and (B) that concentrations of CO₂ have increased, and we have a long-established theory which says A is caused by B. That is good enough for me. Global warming is happening and it is caused by burning fossil fuels.

But will it be disastrous? Here the evidence is much less compelling. But plausible disaster scenarios include the melting of the polar ice caps causing flooding of low-lying lands around the globe; diversion of the Gulf Stream, causing a huge drop in temperature in northern Europe; and other changes in weather patterns which could seriously disrupt agricultural production.

Even if the probability of any one of these things happening is no more than 5 per cent, and even if future damage is discounted in today's money, the present value of the expected cost to the human race is still measured in trillions of dollars. That is the case for taking action.

The key difficulty is that the cause of global warming is the stock of CO₂ in the atmosphere. All we can do is reduce the rate at which we add to that stock. We know that concentrations have been increasing, and temperatures rising, for at least a century. Global emissions today are vastly higher than 100 years ago, so it is almost impossible to imagine reducing them to a point where CO₂ concentrations will fall - particularly when the newly industrialised nations (China, India) are rapidly increasing their energy use. The best we can hope for is to reduce the rate at which the planet heats up.

But that is still worth doing: it buys more time for adapting to the effects of global warming. The key to reducing CO₂ emissions is to recognise that there is a social cost attached to energy use, and to put in place regulation and taxation that reflects the social cost. Simply exhorting people to use less energy does not work; setting industry limits on the amount of CO₂ they can emit, and making them buy permits to emit more, does. So does the relatively crude device of putting taxes on fuel.

A significant proportion of fuel emissions are associated with aviation, so as you fly off to the sun, ponder on the social costs of your actions. Higher tax on aviation fuel would reflect some of those costs, and help to reduce emissions, but this requires international agreement (otherwise planes simply refuel where taxes are lowest).

There is no shortage of viable policies to address the global warming problem. The challenge is to secure an international consensus for implementing them.

Bill Robinson is director of economics at PriceWaterhouse-Coopers

As we fly off for our holidays, with the memory of a record hot July still fresh in our minds, our thoughts turn to global warming. Is it happening? Will it be disastrous? What can be done to stop it or adjust to it?

Not many people now dispute that it is happening. Although variations in temperature are nothing new (the Romans made wine in northern Britain, Samuel Pepys recorded oxen roasted on the frozen Thames), the speed and size of the increase in the global average temperature in recent times is unprecedented. Moreover, it is readily explained by the greenhouse effect, which is a long-established piece of 19th-century science. Layers of gas allow the sun's rays in but bounce back the sun's reflected rays. So the atmosphere warms up, just like the air in a greenhouse, where glass plays the same role. The industrial revolution has put in place additional layers of greenhouse gases, and this explains the sharp rise in global temperatures.

There are many greenhouse gases but the contemporary focus is on carbon dioxide, which is a by-product of burning fossil fuels. CO₂ is not the most damaging greenhouse gas but it is the most plentiful and increasingly so. So we know (A) that the earth has got warmer, and (B) that concentrations of CO₂ have increased, and we have a long-established theory which says A is caused by B. That is good enough for me. Global warming is happening and it is caused by burning fossil fuels.

But will it be disastrous? Here the evidence is much less compelling. But plausible disaster scenarios include the melting of the polar ice caps causing flooding of low-lying lands around the globe; diversion of the Gulf Stream, causing a huge drop in temperature in northern Europe; and other changes in weather patterns which could seriously disrupt agricultural production.

Even if the probability of any one of these things happening is no more than 5 per cent, and even if future damage is discounted in today's money, the present value of the expected cost to the human race is still measured in trillions of dollars. That is the case for taking action.

The key difficulty is that the cause of global warming is the stock of CO₂ in the atmosphere. All we can do is reduce the rate at which we add to that stock. We know that concentrations have been increasing, and temperatures rising, for at least a century. Global emissions today are vastly higher than 100 years ago, so it is almost impossible to imagine reducing them to a point where CO₂ concentrations will fall - particularly when the newly industrialised nations (China, India) are rapidly increasing their energy use. The best we can hope for is to reduce the rate at which the planet heats up.

But that is still worth doing: it buys more time for adapting to the effects of global warming. The key to reducing CO₂ emissions is to recognise that there is a social cost attached to energy use, and to put in place regulation and taxation that reflects the social cost. Simply exhorting people to use less energy does not work; setting industry limits on the amount of CO₂ they can emit, and making them buy permits to emit more, does. So does the relatively crude device of putting taxes on fuel.

A significant proportion of fuel emissions are associated with aviation, so as you fly off to the sun, ponder on the social costs of your actions. Higher tax on aviation fuel would reflect some of those costs, and help to reduce emissions, but this requires international agreement (otherwise planes simply refuel where taxes are lowest).

There is no shortage of viable policies to address the global warming problem. The challenge is to secure an international consensus for implementing them.

So who is Bill Robinson and why is he an expert on global warming? It turns out he's director of economics at PriceWaterhouse-Coopers. I guess he's an expert on something, but certainly not atmospheric science. Not only does he know absolutely nothing about the mechanisms of climate change, he can't even describe the Earth's greenhouse effect correctly. As Blackadder would say, this is complete and utter crap.

Clouds of Doom
From the Daily Mail

Rare clouds could indicate global warming

Rare, mother-of-pearl coloured clouds caused by extreme weather conditions above Antarctica are a possible indication of global warming, Australian scientists have announced.

??????????????????

Known as nacreous clouds, the spectacular formations showing delicate wisps of colours were photographed in the sky over an Australian meteorological base at Mawson Station on July 25.

Nacreous, or noctilucent clouds have been observed by Westerners since 1885. They're not exactly a new phenomenon. They are somewhat of a mystery because according to our present understanding of the upper atmosphere there shouldn't be enough water up that high (upper stratosphere/lower mesosphere) to form clouds.

The clouds can only form in temperatures lower than minus 80 degrees Celsius (minus 112 Fahrenheit). Meteorologist Renae Baker who photographed the clouds, said a weather balloon sent up about 12 miles above the Earth's surface measured temperatures as low as minus 87 Centigrade (minus 124.6 F).

Yes, it does get quite cold in the upper atmosphere. It's even colder in space. So what?

"They reveal extreme conditions in the atmosphere, and promote chemical changes that lead to destruction of vital stratospheric ozone," Baker said.

WTH? I think he's confusing them with PSCs - Polar Stratospheric Clouds which form in the spring over the South Pole (and to a much lesser extent the North Pole). These have been implicated in the formation of the dreaded ozone hole (heard much about that lately?) but they are a NATURALLY OCCURRING YEARLY PHENOMENON. The two types of clouds, nacreous and PSCs, are not necessarily related.

Australian scientist Andrew Klekociuk said said temperatures in the stratosphere, between 5 and 31 miles above Earth, would be expected to drop as global warming increases. Data collected over the past 25 years had reflected this.

"Over that time there has been a small decrease in temperature and that change is actually occurring faster than the warming at the surface of the Earth," he said.

Let's look at some actual data, shall we? Here's a graph of stratospheric/tropospheric temperatures (larger, clearer version here ) Blue lines are stratospheric temperatures, red ones surface temps from 1978 t0 2004. The boxes mark two volcanic eruptions (Pinatubo and El Chichon) and an El Nino event. Do you see surface warming tracking with stratospheric cooling? No? Neither do I. So what was this article trying to prove? That any atmospheric phenomenon that we don't really understand is related to global warming? Please, let's stop trying to get our names in the papers and stick to actual science, OK?