Wishful Thinking

A little humor from De Smog Blog copied in full without permission below.  The author is clearly one of those who missed the fact that even the wildly biased NAS panel agreed with Wegman’s findings.  h/t Tom Fuller – link on right.  I don’t rely on panels myself but rather rely on my own understanding.  Unfortunately the majority of activists have little of that.  The post is full of unsubstantiated accusation but that’s ok because without it, it just wouldn’t be as funny.

Click the big title below to see the original.

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Wegman’s Report Highly Politicized – and Fatally Flawed

AGW: Restoring courtesy to the debate

Guest post – Lucy Skywalker aka Anne Stallybrass.

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AGW: Restoring courtesy to the debate

When a situation has become so fraught, so polarized, that communication between opposing sides breaks down, “mediators” can be called in to set up a process that can enable and allow all parties to feel that they have been heard fairly. Recent engagement at WUWT with Roger Harrabin of the BBC suggests clearly to me a breakdown in communication, with all sides feeling misrepresented. I want to take the line among skeptics that Roger and the BBC are “innocent until proven guilty”, but to do so, I would ask for some conditions for courtesy’s sake. For not only does extra care with courtesy enable disputes to be resolved; I have discovered a surprise: courtesy is the best facilitator for scientific understanding itself to develop. In addition, many of the best scientists suffer from Asperger’s Syndrome (as did Einstein and Newton). Classically, this condition gives passion for Truth to the point of obsession with a narrow field of interest, and difficulty with “normal” human interactions and communicating skills. Thus the Aspies are likely to do the most brilliant science, but they seldom end up as heads of departments, let alone media reporters. They are the ones who understand crucial details that reporters fail to grasp or even to recognize as significant. I know because I had the condition, and still retain many habits developed to cope with that experience.

Model 2010 Human

It is the Air Vent and sometimes you have to let it out. I’ve got some guest posts to run today when I get time but in the meantime, some more lies from the world of science. I’m not a smoker, smoking is bad for your health, but third hand smoke is not a detectable effect and without even reading the paper everyone can tell  —- it is a lie!  It’s a flat out full of bull, unabashed lie.  And make no mistake, it comes right from the same politically progressive people who say they want you to be free.  They say they want equality for everyone.  They claim this is the path to utopia.  However, there is a teenie tiny price  — you MUST  live in the exact mold they prescribe.  You will:

A. Montford, Interviewed by the Register.

Cool interview with Andrew Montford.  – Check out his book, it’s excellent and will be added to the left of this blog next to the Climategate book by Mosher and Fuller, when I get time.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/08/andrew_montford_interview/

Precautionary Principle

This is the kind of thinking which get’s us down the wrong path.  The precautionary principle from Wiki stated below:

The precautionary principle states that if an action or policy has suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of a scientific consensus that harm would not ensue, the burden of proof falls on those who would advocate taking the action. Effectively, this principle allows policy makers to make discretionary decisions in situations where there is evidence of potential harm in the absence of complete scientific proof. The principle implies that there is a responsibility to intervene and protect the public from exposure to harm where scientific investigation discovers a plausible risk in the course of having screened for other suspected causes. The protections that mitigate suspected risks can be relaxed only if further scientific findings emerge that more robustly support an alternative explanation. In some legal systems, as in the law of the European Union, the application of the precautionary principle has been made a statutory requirement.

I’ve seen several writings lately on the creating green jobs lie.  Now keep in mind, I am president and owner of a green company and as such should have a bias.  But as a small business of less than 100 employees, our company doesn’t have the sway with government officials to receive the breaks and incentives.  What’s more, we, like any honest business, recognize that our customers buying power determines our sales to a large extent.  Adding cost to energy, necessarily and absolutely will affect the cost of every single product on the planet, everything.  This is a reduction in buying power which will separate further the haves and have nots.  I plan to be on the have side of the line, but if our costs go up, our sales will go down from where they could have been.  Across the world economy limiting policies will result in less purchasing and less consumption and of course LESS jobs.

Travels in Europe-Part 1

Guest post by Tony Brown

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This is the view from the hill above my house circa 1890. It overlooks the town of Teignmouth on England’s South West coast, where a fascinating parade of characters have lived over the centuries.

Figure 1 View of Teignmouth, Devon http://www.oldukphotos.com/devon_teignmouth.htm

The question today is which of them should we follow in our next excursion into historic climate change, as evidenced by instrumental temperature records?

From my window I can see the landing place of the last invasion of England by a foreign power which destroyed the town in 1690 -a cannonball from the bombardment was found just a few months ago. Its location in French Street tells us who the culprits were. Central England Temperature (CET) during that year was a distinctly chilly 8.92C (although the South West would be markedly warmer due to the influence of the Gulf Stream and prevailing South Westerly winds).

Dr. Pachauri is the product of subprime world polity

Guest post by Dr. Ismael Bhat Professor & Head,  Department of Geology & Geophysics, University of Kashmir

Dr. Bhat has a better understanding of the the IPCC Pachauri situation and mood of the Indian people than I.  In this post, he’s expressed strong views not only toward the Pachauri but the IPCC and the state of world government in general.  Although his writing style is different, it’s hard for me to read and not keep saying yup, um yup, yup.   The world has gone mad, and it’s in large part the peoples  fault for the leaders we elect and the systems we support.

You reap what you sow.

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M. I. Bhat

bhatmi at hotmail dot com

The exposure of scam after scam in such a short time has struck climate model ramp like a desert storm. The international super- model has crashed. The Head of the IPCC, Pachauri, stands undressed with the meltdown of his make-up in the torrid atmosphere created by the exposure of these scams. Skeptics are busy making exhibition of the used make-up and smearing it in dirt (after Russian Yamal brew, it is now Chinese herbs!). The ramp is suddenly deserted. There is none to catwalk the ramp and make a GW/CC statement. But then it had to happen. Fake art sells with ignorant only. Take it to the experts, you know it is junk. That is exactly what happened with IPCC report and its models. Ugly figures to the core covered under tons of make-up creams.

But climate models need not loose heart. News just in is that Vivid Entertainment is setting up a new ramp that should allow them much more than a catwalk. The news precisely is that “Vivid Entertainment has bought the film rights to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.” The film promises new (or real?) meaning to terms “Working Group 1, Working Group 2 and Working Group 3” and entirely “new interpretation” to peer-review process. Obama administration too should be happy: No more demand for bail out from this quarter! So a brand new and wide open opportunity for the international supermodel, his make-up (hockey stick) team and the whole lot of national/back street climate models to exhibit/sell off their wares.

There is just one likely hitch to this enterprise, though. The news comes, as it does, soon after the release of Pachauri’s novel, ‘Return to Almorah.’ Writing in the Telegraph, Robert Mendick and Amrit Dhillon find the novel “smutty.” I am afraid skeptics might cry ‘clash of interests’ here too. I would advise them to try to see the positive in it. Going beyond the IPCC’s latest guidelines, Vivid enterprise altogether eliminates need for chemicals to disinfect boots and clothes, be the climate models catwalking the ramp in Antarctica or anywhere on the globe! After all, who isn’t against use of too many chemicals, alarmist or skeptic? Moreover, I have the interest of my local, back street climate models in sight who, at a huge cost to us taxpayers, had just begun to learn their first catwalk steps on the Working Group II ramp.

First Principles

Ok, so I’ve just realized something. There are smart people here who take issue with the fact that CO2 captures/retards/slows down, heat flow. Now of course there are nuances, but at Climate Audit Steve doesn’t like the discussion b/c we’ve all heard it before. I mean that’s what it is, we have all heard the arguments. I can’t even imagine a unique new one.

I’ll give my opinion just to start the discussion, but what will happen is that others will give theirs and this thread won’t have anything to do with me or my crazy views.

My opinion is:

CO2 is more absorbent of heat in longwave than shortwave radiation. Because sunlight absorbed and re-emitted, the energy is converted from short to long wavelength, there is necessarily a warming effect. The questions in my mind are how much, how dangerous and what can we do about it.

My answers are dunno, but less warming than IPCC rubbish, likely beneficial and can’t be changed with today’s technology.

Does that make me a lukewarmer, a denier, a skeptic or what?

Open Thread #1

Ok, tAV is probably long overdue for an open thread. Open means open for climate related discussion. Not that I clip anything, but intelligent people need space to have discussion.

Keep it civil and I’m looking forward to what we might learn.

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An interesting topic is Diatribe Guy’s request for some help with a problem put forth far too often by the advocate crowd.

Tough Times

Ok, this is a bit difficult to blog on b/c it deals with a man so emotionally distraught but it’s very difficult to have sympathy for him. The same guy who would hide the decline, claim he didn’t, delete IPCC emials, claim he didn’t, write that he would rather delete temperature data than let people see it. He’s now had several death threats and was thinking of killing himself – all this occurred because he would not let people see the thermometer data. I doubt that a terrorist cell could create such loyalty.

I am sorry this cocky arrogant bastard is having such a tough time, but gee doc — all you had to do was share the damned data – and stop lying!

Those who have focused on Phil Climategate Jones, have misplaced their anger. Phil is guilty as hell for sure, but a lot of people around him knew it. They are also guilty. What’s more, I predict they will continue to be guilty over the coming years, having no remorse or punishment whatsoever for that which they fabricate. Instead the international climate business, which has been structured to reward exaggerations, will continue on unabated but perhaps more cautious. All that said, Phil can’t leave the group soon enough though, a few decades away from the stress of collecting and disclosing data would do him some good.

Click the headline below for the full article.

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I thought of killing myself, says climate scandal professor Phil Jones

THE scientist at the centre of the “climategate” email scandal has revealed that he was so traumatised by the global backlash against him that he contemplated suicide.

Climatequotes, at it again.

This was just sent to me by email.  Click the title and give him a comment or two for support..

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IPCC bases claim of 1.3 billion agricultural workers on news article, changes title

It is now clear that the IPCC has made several factual errors in their Fourth Assessment Report. The Himalayan glaciers will not melt by 2035, and more than half of the Netherlands are not below sea level. I may have found another error. If it is not an error, it is certainly some very sloppy work.

In AR4, WGIII, section 8.4.5 Potential implications of mitigation options for sustainable development:

“Agriculture contributes 4% of global GDP (World Bank, 2003) and provides employment to 1.3 billion people (Dean, 2000).”

That is a fairly specific number, 1.3 billion. What census, survey, or study did they cite that came up with this number? Dean, 2000 is referenced as:

Dean, T., 2000: Development: agriculture workers too poor to buy food. UN IPS, New York, 36 pp.

The UN IPS is the United Nations Inter Press Service. They cited a news article. This article was difficult to find, but I did get it.

Interestingly enough, the actual title of the article is different than the IPCC’s reference. The title is “Agriculture Workers Too Poor to Buy Food, Say Unions“. Here it is also referenced with the ’say unions’ ending. But the IPCC’s reference drops the ’say unions’ from the end. If you search for this article on IPS’ site, you get to see a link to the article with the title. It includes ’say unions’. Is this an intentional omission of a reference to unions, or just sloppy work? Here is the article, see for yourself:

Id’s Out

Detectives question climate change scientist over email leaks

An article about the emails at the guardian where some guy Patrick Condon is featured. I received a surprise call at home from a reporter David Leigh asking for Patrick this weekend, and was told my info was easy to find. I tried to find it myself for a twenty minutes without success, so I at this point I don’t believe the reporter. I asked him to use Jeff, which is my middle name and the one I use, and also the one everyone knows me by. I thought it important just to limit the warminista nutjobs on my porch, but apparently my polite request was declined. So just about everything is known about me now and I do consider it a risk. My only comfort now is that the crazies out there typically aren’t as well armed as I, and they typically have a more even temper

The article linked above discusses why Paul Dennis would have leaked the emails. I don’t believe Paul’s work is as skeptical as described, the paper he sent was referencing Steig et al’s Antarctic warming study and heavy warming trends in the peninsula region. Again, there is no way Paul was the one who released the emails which were pre-collected in a group on a backup server. Paul, as a paleoclimatologist, would have known that at least this one file which was pointed out by the hacker/releaser wasn’t news. – “0939154709.txt * Osborn: we usually stop the series in 1960″

Sophist-inators

I don’t know any other way to react to this. The IPCC released this statement which is covered at WUWT. As you all know, I have an attitude problem with bovine scatology. Below is the IPCC statement, below that is my translation for the layman.

Recent media interest has drawn attention to two so-called errors in the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the IPCC, the first dealing with losses from disasters and the second on the subject of Amazon forests. The leadership of the IPCC has looked into both these instances and concluded that the challenges are without foundations. In neither case, did we find any basis for making changes in the wording of the report. We are convinced that there has been no error on those issues on the part of the IPCC. We released a statement about the disaster issue. As far as the second subject dealing with the Amazon is concerned, again, the IPCC has valid reasons for publishing the text as it stands in the report.

In response to these baseless charges, we have decided to provide details on the manner in which the IPCC has implemented its principles and procedures. These are the foundations that provide assurance on the validity and accuracy of statements made in the AR4.

And the real version:

The Mann Report

Michael Mann’s PNAS investigation turned out as expected.  Steve McIntyre has a short post on it.  Click the link below.  I’ll hold my own, far less reasonable comments, for later.

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The Mann Report -by Steve McIntyre

Feb 3, 2010 – 3:26 PM

Is here. I’ll comment later.

4 p.m. A couple of quick points. Readers should understand that I have limited expectations from this sort of inquiry. What I do expect is that the authors not make untrue statements that can be easily disproven. (At least make them hard to disprove.)

Point 1. Penn State President Spanier is quoted as saying:

“I know they’ve taken the time and spent hundreds of hours studying documents and interviewing people and looking at issues from all sides,” Spanier said.

The only interviews mentioned in the report are with Gerry North and Donald Kennedy, editor of Science. What does Donald Kennedy know about the matter? These two hardly constitute “looking at issues from all sides”. They didn’t even talk to Wegman. Contrary to Spanier’s claim, they did not make the slightest effort to talk to any critic or even neutral observer.

The Power Behind Hurricanes and Tornadoes

For a long time I’ve wanted to do a post on some work by Dr. Anastassia Makarieva who has in my opinion explained the driving mechanisms behind hurricanes and tornadoes. Now I’m not an expert, but as an aeronautical engineer the equations were familiar so the paper read easily. As I understand it, the mechanism she describes was previously unknown and this work is starting to gain some acceptance. If she’s right, and I think she is, the work explains far more than just hurricanes and tornadoes though, it also explains a missing driver of winds on earth as well as planets throughout the solar system – condensation.

On the validity of representing hurricanes as Carnot heat engine
A. M. Makarieva1,2, V. G. Gorshkov1,2, and B.-L. Li2

Now we’ve all been taught, warm air rises and cold air falls, to create updrafts, wind, tornadoes and this kind of thing (Carnot heat engines). Anastassia’s work demonstrates problems with the Carnot model and then looks at the forces created when a moist air column experiences condensation. The condensation itself removes water from the gas phase resulting in a pressure drop. This pressure drop powers the column of rising air in the walls of hurricanes and tornadoes. It’s really an exciting development, but as a climate outsider it seems hit you in the head obvious. Who knew this hadn’t already been figured out? Anyway, the work is very interesting and an entertaining read.

UEA Files Were on a Single Server

Since these files first came out, there has been a lot of speculation as to the source of them.  Today we learn that, in fact, my Id may have guessed correctly as to the nature of the breach.  David Leigh of the Guardian broke the story using an oddly rare technique these days called investigation – those Brits are so old fashioned.  I would be remiss to not mention that the UK press have represented the only ‘for profit’ media outlets worth a crap on Climategate.

Yesterday David King was making some wild speculations about international terrorists and behind the scenes, I received an email about how stupid he looked for saying so ‘from a British reporter’.  I wrote a whole post last night about it, but it was just a rant by the time I finished, so it went to the trash.  Anyway the whole stupid event he created, prompted the university of East Anglia to release this little tidbit of information.

In fact, as UEA confirmed today, all the files and emails were archived on a single backup server on the Norwich campus. Once access was gained, it would have been simple to copy all the material.

So being the instant expert in profiling that I am, lets look again at the relevant facts.  We have the childish act of taking over the Real Climate server (likely from shared passwords in the files), posting a link at Climate Audit saying then a miracle occurred.  No international organization would behave that way, it’s obviously a giddy kids prank.  Can you imagine how fun that would have been in college, and for those of you who are older, can you imagine how scared you’d be now?  — and Sir King was too slow witted to figure it out.