What was left out of the SOTU?

Apparently, a lot.

More Climategate

It looks like the only thing man-made (anthropogenic) about climate change is the hysteria.

Via James Delingpole at the Telegraph:

Climategate just got much, much bigger. And all thanks to the Russians who, with perfect timing, dropped this bombshell just as the world’s leaders are gathering in Copenhagen to discuss ways of carbon-taxing us all back to the dark ages.

Feast your eyes on this news release from Rionovosta, via the Ria Novosti agency, posted on Icecap. (Hat Tip: Richard North)

A discussion of the November 2009 Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident, referred to by some sources as “Climategate,” continues against the backdrop of the abortive UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen (COP15) discussing alternative agreements to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that aimed to combat global warming.

The incident involved an e-mail server used by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich, East England. Unknown persons stole and anonymously disseminated thousands of e-mails and other documents dealing with the global-warming issue made over the course of 13 years.

Controversy arose after various allegations were made including that climate scientists colluded to withhold scientific evidence and manipulated data to make the case for global warming appear stronger than it is.

Climategate has already affected Russia. On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.

The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory. Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports. Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.

The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.

The HadCRUT database includes specific stations providing incomplete data and highlighting the global-warming process, rather than stations facilitating uninterrupted observations.

On the whole, climatologists use the incomplete findings of meteorological stations far more often than those providing complete observations.

IEA analysts say climatologists use the data of stations located in large populated centers that are influenced by the urban-warming effect more frequently than the correct data of remote stations.

The scale of global warming was exaggerated due to temperature distortions for Russia accounting for 12.5% of the world’s land mass. The IEA said it was necessary to recalculate all global-temperature data in order to assess the scale of such exaggeration.

Global-temperature data will have to be modified if similar climate-date procedures have been used from other national data because the calculations used by COP15 analysts, including financial calculations, are based on HadCRUT research.

What the Russians are suggesting here, in other words, is that the entire global temperature record used by the IPCC to inform world government policy is a crock.

As Richard North says: This is serial.

UPDATE: As Steve McIntyre reports at ClimateAudit, it has long been suspected that the CRU had been playing especially fast and loose with Russian – more particularly Siberian – temperature records. Here from March 2004, is an email from Phil Jones to Michael Mann.

Recently rejected two papers (one for JGR and for GRL) from people saying CRU has it
wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either
appears
I will be very surprised, but you never know with GRL.
Cheers
Phil

And here at Watts Up With That is a guest post by Jeff Id of the Air Vent

And here is what one of the commenters has to say about the way the data has been cherry-picked and skewed for political ends:

The crux of the argument is that the CRU cherry picked data following the same methods that have been done everywhere else. They ignored data covering 40% of Russia and chose data that showed a warming trend over statistically preferable alternatives when available. They ignored completeness of data, preferred urban data, strongly preferred data from stations that relocated, ignored length of data set.

One the final page, there is a chart that shows that CRU’s selective use of 25% of the data created 0.64C more warming than simply using all of the raw data would have done. The complete set of data show 1.4C rise since 1860, the CRU set shows 2.06C rise over the same period.

Not, of course, dear readers that I’m in any way tempted to crow about these latest revelations. After all, so many of my colleagues, junior and senior, have been backing me on this one to the hilt….

Oh, if anyone speaks Russian, here’s the full report.

Anybody remember this oldie but goodie:

Help for the Climategate guys

Shamelessly ganked from Bore Patch.

Global Warming farfromproven

fahrfromprovin fahrfromproven farfromprovin climategate

Anybody remember those old Fahrvergnügen commercials?

They spawned a whole industry of cheap t-shirts of German-sounding neologisms:

Fahrfrompoopin - constipated

Fahrfromthinkin - an idiot

Fahrfrompukin - partying

Fahrfromnewgen - old/used

You get the picture. Anyway, I've been thinking of a new word to describe the fiasco over the fake science & data manipulation that has been at the heart of the global warming scam. Here's what I've come up with: FARFROMPROVEN


It's time to face the facts. Anthropogenic global warming isn't science...it's a religion for people with a deficient apocalyptic.

Advent gives us a chance to look at the coming King who will truly baptize the world with Fire, and find Him while he still presents himself in the vulnerability of the incarnation.

Climategate: Exposing the Lie That Needs to Die

James Delingpole has been doing yeoman's work exposing the disgusting underbelly of the anthropogenic global warming sham. He recently exposed a massive conspiracy among climate 'scientists' to cover up data that undermined their hypothesis.

Sorry, Goracle, you're just going to have to find another way to make a living than jetting around the world telling people that they have to...stop jetting around the world.

Read it and keep an eye out. There are people who love to concoct a crisis so they can use it to take away your freedom. (Yes, GWB did this. Yes, BHO is doing it now. Yes, the one-worlders are still trying to use the dead horse of "climate change" to undermine the economies of the West.)

Here's my point. People are falling for the apocalypse now garbage coming from these groups because they've stopped listening to the one person who actually knows how the world is going to end. (Hint: it's the same person who actually knows how the world began.)

Sanity from the Global Warming Crowd

A recent study in Climactic Change offers one of the most hopeful solutions to the production of green-house gases: Bring the Green Revolution to the earth's great deserts.

Unlike many of the half-baked ideas (in both economics and science) for dealing with emissions, this is one that has a feasible pricetag, and is based on achievable methods.

Moreover, we could learn how terraforming changes ecologies, and how to take long-term incremental steps to revamping bioshperes - information that will come in useful when we look to colonize other planets. So this is a win-win: present help, future progress.

Now if only we can keep the greenieweenies from ruining it.

h/t PhDiva

NSF Scientists find links between solar activity and climate change

Looks like somebody didn't get the memo.

From NCAR:

An international team of scientists led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) used more than a century of weather observations and three powerful computer models to tackle one of the more difficult questions in meteorology: if the total energy that reaches Earth from the Sun varies by only 0.1 percent across the approximately 11-year solar cycle, how can such a small variation drive major changes in weather patterns on Earth?

The answer, according to the new study, has to do with the Sun's impact on two seemingly unrelated regions. Chemicals in the stratosphere and sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean respond during solar maximum in a way that amplifies the Sun's influence on some aspects of air movement. This can intensify winds and rainfall, change sea surface temperatures and cloud cover over certain tropical and subtropical regions, and ultimately influence global weather.

"The Sun, the stratosphere, and the oceans are connected in ways that can influence events such as winter rainfall in North America," says NCAR scientist Gerald Meehl, the lead author. "Understanding the role of the solar cycle can provide added insight as scientists work toward predicting regional weather patterns for the next couple of decades."

Source 1 & 2

What? you mean my van isn't causing global warming, but instead it's that ginormous thermonuclear furnace near our planet? Preposterous.

Now how am I supposed to salve my conscience - especially since Obama's energy* is going into health-care instead of Waxman's wealthcare cap-n-trade?

Whew...that's better. So would this be vehicular confession?

Hobbit House

My wife thinks I'm crazy for wanting to live under the earth. But I think it makes a lot of sense, ecologically and from a security standpoint. Now that I've seen this, I also have the aesthetic argument wrapped up!Some key points of the design and construction:

• Dug into hillside for low visual impact and shelter
• Stone and mud from diggings used for retaining walls, foundations etc.
• Frame of oak thinnings (spare wood) from surrounding woodland
• Reciprocal roof rafters are structurally and aesthaetically fantastic and very easy to do
• Straw bales in floor, walls and roof for super-insulation and easy building
• Plastic sheet and mud/turf roof for low impact and ease
• Lime plaster on walls is breathable and low energy to manufacture (compared to cement)
• Reclaimed (scrap) wood for floors and fittings
• Anything you could possibly want is in a rubbish pile somewhere (windows, burner, plumbing, wiring...)
• Woodburner for heating - renewable and locally plentiful
• Flue goes through big stone/plaster lump to retain and slowly release heat
• Fridge is cooled by air coming underground through foundations
• Skylight in roof lets in natural feeling light
• Solar panels for lighting, music and computing
• Water by gravity from nearby spring
• Compost toilet
• Roof water collects in pond for garden etc.

I invoke Godwin's Law

Okay...I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but...

The Goracle has tripped to the ridiculous...he's now saying that global warming (or, more properly, skeptics of anthropogenic global warming) is the Nazism of our time.

So, I guess he's using Godwin's Law to shut down the argument since - despite his constant crowing - the science is still unsettled.

P.S. - Hey sunspots, welcome back!

It's Not Rocket Science

From the DUH department....

Scientists at NASA have found a correlation between solar activity cycles and the recent warming trends that the global-warbling greenieweenie alarmists have been telling us about - when they aren't talking about shutting down the skeptics by murder or enacting taxes of dubious repute. (Story from Science Daily here.)

Over the past century, Earth's average temperature has increased by approximately 0.6 degrees Celsius (1.1 degrees Fahrenheit). Solar heating accounts for about 0.15 C, or 25 percent, of this change, according to computer modeling results published by NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies researcher David Rind in 2004.

The sun is relatively calm compared to other stars. "We don't know what the sun is going to do a hundred years from now," said Doug Rabin, a solar physicist at Goddard. "It could be considerably more active and therefore have more influence on Earth's climate."

Or, it could be calmer, creating a cooler climate on Earth similar to what happened in the late 17th century. Almost no sunspots were observed on the sun's surface during the period from 1650 to 1715. This extended absence of solar activity may have been partly responsible for the Little Ice Age in Europe and may reflect cyclic or irregular changes in the sun's output over hundreds of years. During this period, winters in Europe were longer and colder by about 1 C than they are today.

I know that the man-as-the-measure-of-all-things ideology is comfortingly arrogant, but there are forces of nature that are beyond our control. And they have a much bigger impact on our planetary climate systems than does your choice between a Prius and an Land Rover. Heck...plankton probably have a bigger impact.

Since then, there seems to have been on average a slow increase in solar activity. Unless we find a way to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases we put into the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning, the solar influence is not expected to dominate climate change. But the solar variations are expected to continue to modulate both warming and cooling trends at the level of 0.1 to 0.2 degrees Celsius (0.18 to 0.26 Fahrenheit) over many years.

Like many studies, this conclusion was based less on hard data and more on questionable correlations and inaccurate modeling techniques. (Not to mention that the political machine - both in national policy and academic policy - is shamelessly in the greenieweenie court.)

The inconvertible fact, here is that even NASA's own study acknowledges that solar variation has caused climate change in the past and is likely the main culprit for current trends. And even the study's members, mostly ardent supports of AGW theory, acknowledge that the sun may play a significant role in future climate changes.

More hard data at SORCE.

All I have to say is this: As Al Gore and other people who stand to make a lot of money from global warming scare tactics will tell you, “the science is settled.” Unless you drive a hybrid, stumble around in the dark at night, and only eat things you find in your yard, you’re killing the planet.

So I don’t see what a big fat ball of hot gas way up in the sky has to do with anything.

But enough about Al Gore in his private jet.

Looks like Al Gore is campaigning again

Global Lukewarming

Hunter and the Hunted

The Daily Mail reported on a harrowing hunt in Barrow, Alaska.


Apparently, Barrow (Alaska's northernmost town) has a history of these critters getting after folks. I'll bet this guy stands behind his governor's approval of the reducing polar bear population.

But he may have a question about why she didn't gun it down, since she can apparently see a lot from her front porch.


h/t PhDiva

O Rahm, O Rahm, Emmanuel

Though I really haven't the time, I'm suspecting that by next Advent this won't be as funny. Necessity is the mother of ADvention

(C'mon....you know the tune.)

Oh Rahm, Oh Rahm E-mman-u-el
I hope you have a senate seat to sell!
Chicago politics written large,
Now that Obama has been put in charge.

Refrain

Rejoice, pro-choice! Emmanuel
has cabinet and judges seats to sell.

O come, desire of nations, blind
Us with your soaring rhetoric, sublime.
Bid rising waters hasty retreat,
And be the presidential Prince of Peace.

Refrain

Rejoice, pro-choice! Emmanuel
has cabinet and judges seats to sell.

Global Warming or SeaLab

It seems that TIME is trying to get back into journalism. They've recently reported on a study that suggests a reason for storms causing more and more damage.

No...it's not climate change.

No...it's not governmental incompetence.

It's our mastery of land capture.

We are seeing more damage from natural disasters because we are able to successfully live in more dangerous places.

"There has been no trend in the number or intensity of storms at landfall since 1900," says Pielke, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado. "The storms themselves haven't changed."

Wait...didn't the Goracle predict worse and worse storms because of American SUVs?

Look, if someone were to build Sealab 2020 and then there were a sudden uptick in people dying from compression sickness or shark attacks, you wouldn't blame deep zone water pressure. Or if SkyLab started experiencing routine lung decompressions, you wouldn't blame atmospheric loss. So why are so many ideologues ready to say "global warming" for every disaster?

There are some elements of human culpability that needs to be addressed: land use and unfair insurance practices.

Before we become hopelessly lost in despair, however, there is good news: we can do something about this problem. We can enact meaningful building codes and stop keeping insurance premiums artificially low in flood zones.

But first we need to understand that disasters aren't just caused by FEMA and greenhouse gases. Says Tierney: "I don't think that people have an understanding of questions they should be asking — about where they live, about design and construction, about building inspection, fire protection. These just aren't things that are on people's minds."

In real estate, the old mantra is Location, location, location. It should be. Some plots are naturally good for building. Others have to have a lot of preparation, then maintenance. It is a poor use of our resources to continually try to fight against natural consequences. It ties up capital and man-power in maintenance rather than expansion.

More Noble than Nobel

People sometimes ask me why I'm so against the whole global warming topic.

"Even if it's not man-made, doesn't it make sense to get off fossil fuels?" (Yes, it does.)

"Aren't you a corporate shill?" (Not according to my bank account.)

The problem with focusing on global warming is that it draws our attention away from concerns which we can actually address. We end up giving Nobel Prizes to imposter / hypocrites like Al Gore and leave real humanitarians - like Irena Sandler on the left, who was tortured by the Nazis for her aid to the Polish Jews in WWII - behind.
True story.

Bjorn Lomborg eloquently shows that the impact we can have by addressing other human problems (extreme poverty, malaria, food infrastructure) with the BILLIONS being pumped into "green tech" is FAR GREATER than the impact expected by even the most generous global warblers.

We lose the opportunity to deal with injustices which we can actually redress by focusing on that which we cannot effect. This is ethical escapism, in my view. At election time, sloganeering rules the day. FEED THE POOR!!! (But I'm going to ignore my neighbor who is facing foreclosure.) STOP ABORTION!!! (But I have no intention of donating to abortion alternatives or changing my scornful glances at unwed mothers.)

We like to focus on issues that are important, but over which we can do so little. It insulates us from focusing on those issues where we can do something to advance others, defend (and propagate) our values, and make an impact.

I invite you to use whatever energy has been put into the election cycle or whatever your pet issue is and do something locally. You'll feel empowered. Who knows...you may actually start changing things from the bottom up.

You are what you eat

Apparently, researchers at Oxford University have found out that if you are a vegan you're more likely to become a vegetable in later life.

Of course, one look at the proto-vegetotalitarian could tell you that.



Ooh...looks like the effects are starting early for some EarthFirsters.

So what do we do with Romans 14 now?

The Goracle Flubs Again

He apparently has a new House Boat that he calls Bio-Solar One. He says it's environmentally friendly - run on solar and bio-fuels.

Unfortunately, photographers caught him plugged in to not one, but TWO regular outlets at the marina!


Al is shameless.

He also has him a gas-guzzling sea-doo on the back! As Glenn Reynolds often says: I’ll start acting like there’s a climate crisis when Al Gore does.

Glacier Gladness for Global Madness

The BBC recently reported on some archaeological finds from the Alps indicating fluctuating temperatures over the last 7,000 years. Included were paleolithic artifacts, Roman coins, and Medieval clothing.

I really hope people will take time to listen to history before attempting to abandon a way of life that has produced some of the greatest humanitarian advances of all time.

Moving off of fossil fuels

If somebody says that their energy policy is to get us off of fossil fuels, make sure they elaborate step two.