EclectEcon

I REALLY Struggle with "Settled Science"

Peope don't seem to understand that I am a global-warming skeptic, not a denier. I have friends whose knowledge, ability, and integrity I repect on both sides of the questions associated with global warming. And I have friends whose knowledge, ability, and/or integrity I do not respect on both sides of those questions.

Because so many people were yelling at me, haranguing me, that global warming is "settled science" 6 years ago, I hope you can understand my skepticism in light of the failures of so many computer models about climate change.

And when I see articles like this one, I'm not sure what it all means, but it certainly increases my doubts.

A chilly Arctic summer has left nearly a million more square miles of ocean covered with ice than at the same time last year – an increase of 60 per cent.

The rebound from 2012’s record low comes six years after the BBC reported that global warming would leave the Arctic ice-free in summer by 2013.

Instead, days before the annual autumn re-freeze is due to begin, an unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia’s northern shores.

... 

Some eminent scientists now believe the world is heading for a period of cooling that will not end until the middle of this century – a process that would expose computer forecasts of imminent catastrophic warming as dangerously misleading.

The disclosure comes 11 months after The Mail on Sunday triggered intense political and scientific debate by revealing that global warming has ‘paused’ since the beginning of 1997 – an event that the computer models used by climate experts failed to predict.

In March, this newspaper further revealed that temperatures are about to drop below the level that the models forecast with ‘90 per cent certainty’.

The pause – which has now been accepted as real by every major climate research centre – is important, because the models’ predictions of ever-increasing global temperatures have made many of the world’s economies divert billions of pounds into ‘green’ measures to counter  climate change.

Those predictions now appear gravely flawed.

 

Dangerous Demagoguery: "Trust us. We will do what's good for you without telling you what we're doing."

I really resent the tone of this article about genetically modified organisms [GMOs]. It says, in essence,

• GMOs are safe. 
• Trust us. We know. 
• But the European experience shows that food processors won't use GMOs if they have to label their products as containing GMOs because
• consumers are ignorant and think GMOs are harmful.
• Therefore (?) we shouldn't have to label them.

I'm inclined to agree that GMOs are most likely safe. I have no problem with consuming them myself or letting, even encouraging, my family use them.

But someone who says they should be allowed to hide the contents of their products because consumers are too ignorant to know the truth is just an elitist interventionist. If indeed, foods using GMOs are cheaper and safe, let consumers who are savvy buy them and save money while the ignorant consumers suffer from paying too much. 

I resent all attempts by politicians and anyone else from all political persuasions who try to tell us they know what is best for us. 

Elitist snobs. And potentially dangerous demagogues. 

Rent-seeking in the Global Warming Community?

A recent report on arctic ice changes suggests that the polar ice cap is melting fast and that this melting will release more methane into the atmosphere, creating even more global warming.

“The imminent disappearance of the summer sea ice in the Arctic will have enormous implications for both the acceleration of climate change, and the release of methane from offshore waters which are now able to warm up in the summer. This massive methane boost will have major implications for global economies and societies,” Wadhams says.

The decline in Arctic sea ice has been widely seen as economically beneficial because it opens up more shipping and drilling in a region thought to contain 30 per cent of the world’s undiscovered gas and 13 per cent of its undiscovered oil.

But melting ice is releasing plumes of methane into the Earth’s atmosphere, speeding up the pace of global warming, Wadhams says.

Maybe. As readers of EclectEcon know, I am rarely persuaded by stories of doom and gloom having to do with global warming. But what really got to me in this story was this:

He called on world leaders to “kick-start investment in rigorous economic modelling” that calculates the impact of a changing Arctic landscape.

That's right. He says we need more gubmnt funding for economic models. As I wrote to Jack, 

Their solution? gubmnt funding of economic models.

• which are likely to be no more accurate than the current climate-change models
• which are likely to be no more accurate than the current economic models
• which is self-serving rent-seeking on their part: Oh, there's a problem and the gubmnt should fund us to save the world.

Climate scientists are worse than the economists who have accurately forecast 9 of the past 5 recessions. They have inaccurately forecast 20 years of global warming.

Suppose the researchers are right. If so, or even if there is a good chance they are right, then private businesses have a HUGE incentive to do this modelling themselves. And who will they hire? Certainly not just alarmists and certainly not just self-promoting advocates. They want to get it right.

I would be surprised if there are not already many private consortiums working on these models. 

Can 73 Climate-Change Models ALL Be Wrong?

I have no idea how reliable this information is. But if it is correct, and if the observed data all lie outside and below the predictions of the models, then it is time for the people who model climate change to change their models.

Note that these are temperatures from the "troposphere". Also see this for comments. 

Global Warming "Scientists" Cooked Their Data

Every time I think maybe there really is something to the concerns about global warming, I find out that the people claiming that global warming is or will be serious cooked/fudged/lied about their data. Thank goodness for people like Ross McKitrick (a colleague when I visited Guelph a few years ago). His recent piece in the Financial Post highlights more highjinks:

In recent years there have been a number of cases in which high-profile papers from climate scientists turned out, on close inspection, to rely on unseemly tricks, fudges and/or misleading analyses. After they get uncovered in the blogosphere, the academic community rushes to circle the wagons and denounce any criticism as “denialism.” There’s denialism going on all right — on the part of scientists who don’t see that their continuing defence of these kinds of practices exacts a toll on the public credibility of their field.

Cooking the data is simply not legitimate, and it looks as if that's what too many people in the global-warming non-skeptic camp have been doing.

Update:  Harold Brooks writes "McKitrick knows a great deal about cooking data. He was involved in cherry picking the 1% most sensitive artificial time series from an experiment and treating them as random selections. See http://deepclimate.org/2010/11/16/replication-and-due-diligence-wegman-style/ and Mashey's other analyses of Wegman, McIntyre, and McKitrick."

I wish I understood the nature of the debate better.

Global Warming and Computer Models in Economics and Climate Science

Arnold Kling's take is nicely summarized:

Computer simulations give you exquisitely precise unreliable results. Those who run such simulations and call what they do “science” are deceiving themselves.

For more, see this.

A classic example of the problem involved The Club of Rome, which predicted the earth would run out of resources using models that didn't incorporate any price effects on either the demand or the supply side. 

And for a Lomborg summary of global warming, see this. Lomborg is not a denier. Here is his summary (from Facebook):

My cover story for The Sunday Times (the biggest UK broadsheet with 1m copies). 

Getting smarter with global warming:

"As I fly into a snow-bound Britain, I realise that you might be asking where global warming has gone as you shiver in the coldest March for 50 years and wonder what you will do if gas has to be rationed. I have been involved in the climate debate for more than a decade, but I am still amazed at how wrong we get it. Let us try to restart our thinking on global warming.

Yes, global warming is real and mostly man-made, but our policies have failed predictably and spectacularly.

I was one of the strongest critics of the Kyoto climate change treaty, back when it was considered gospel.

People were aghast when you criticised it then. Now Kyoto has no friends, and everyone remembers how they really did not believe in it.

If we want to avoid our current ambitions failing in the same way, if we want to get past Britain’s unworkable and inefficient Climate Change Act and the EU’s climate policies, we need to face up to some hard truths.

I am going to explain the things everyone ought to know about climate change. Then I will set out the ways in which our policies do not work and show you an approach that has a much better chance of fixing the climate."

The whole article is behind a paywall; however, you will recognize some of the figures from my testimony for Congress (http://lomborg.com/testimony).

The Tragic Folly of "Earth Hour": "Its vain symbolism reveals exactly what is wrong with today's feel-good environmentalism."

Bjørn Lomborg is one of the most realistic environmentalists I've ever read. He goes beyond alleged benefits and looks at costs and feedback effects, and he pays attention to the impacts of changed/distorted incentives. In a recent piece in Slate, he takes on the folly of Earth Hour, scheduled for March 23rd.

[T]he reality is that Earth Hour teaches all the wrong lessens, and it actually increases CO₂ emissions. Its vain symbolism reveals exactly what is wrong with today’s feel-good environmentalism.

... Hypothetically, switching off the lights for an hour would cut CO₂ emissions from power plants around the world. But, even if everyone in the entire world cut all residential lighting, and this translated entirely into CO₂ reduction, it would be the equivalent of China pausing its CO₂ emissions for less than four minutes. In fact, Earth Hour will cause emissions to increase.

As the United Kingdom’s National Grid operators have found, a small decline in electricity consumption does not translate into less energy being pumped into the grid, and therefore will not reduce emissions. Moreover, during Earth Hour, any significant drop in electricity demand will entail a reduction in CO₂ emissions during the hour, but it will be offset by the surge from firing up coal or gas stations to restore electricity supplies afterward.

And the cozy candles that many participants will light, which seem so natural and environmentally friendly, are still fossil fuels—and almost 100 times less efficient than incandescent light bulbs. Using one candle for each switched-off bulb cancels out even the theoretical CO₂ reduction; using two candles means that you emit more CO₂.[emphasis added].

... To green the world’s energy, we should abandon the old-fashioned policy of subsidizing unreliable solar and wind—a policy that has failed for 20 years, and that will fail for the next 22. Instead, we should focus on inventing new, more efficient green technologies to outcompete fossil fuels.

If we really want a sustainable future for all of humanity and our planet, we shouldn’t plunge ourselves back into darkness. Tackling climate change by turning off the lights and eating dinner by candlelight smacks of the “let them eat cake” approach to the world’s problems that appeals only to well-electrified, comfortable elites.

Related articles

The Use of Fossil Fuels and the GREENING of the Planet

Global Warming: It is NOT Settled Science

The Use of Fossil Fuels and the GREENING of the Planet

 In this 18-minute video, Matt Ridley explains why and how the use of fossil fuels is contributing to the greening of the planet:

From Reason magazine (h/t JB):

Over the past three decades, our planet has gotten greener!

Even stranger, the greening of the planet in recent decades appears to be happening because of, not despite, our reliance on fossil fuels. While environmentalists often talk about how bad stuff like CO2 causes bad things to happen like global warming, it turns out that the plants aren't complaining.

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Global Warming: It is NOT Settled Science

A must watch - Greening the Planet - Dr. Matt Ridley

Matt Ridley: Burning fossil fuels is greening the planet

Matt Ridley on How Fossil Fuels are Greening the Planet

Global Warming: It is NOT Settled Science

Long-time readers of EclectEcon know that I am what is called a Global-Warming Skeptic. Check the links here, for example.

I'm not a denier; I'm just not sure. For example, when I look at how far the Athabasca Glacier has receded, it is impossible to deny that at in some parts of the world average temperatures seem to have risen. 

At the same time, I know there are parts of the world where ice continues to build up. And the year-to-year variation in temperatures is so big that discerning longer-term trends and cycles is quite difficult (sounds like economics!). Furthermore, the temperature evidence for so many years was being taken from weather stations that were located near expanding cities where temperatures tend to be higher even if global temperatures are not rising.

But anytime I would express skepticism, or anytime I would suggest maybe the costs due to global warming might be much less than the costs of trying to prevent it, I'd be met with assertions that "it is settled science."

It isn't, as this survey of earth scientists reveals [h/t Jack].

Only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis, according to a survey reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies. By contrast, a strong majority of the 1,077 respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem.

The survey results show geoscientists (also known as earth scientists) and engineers hold similar views as meteorologists. Two recent surveys of meteorologists (summarized here and here) revealed similar skepticism of alarmist global warming claims.

And people claim that economists can't agree on anything! hunh.

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More on Global Warming

More on the IPCC's Latest Leaked Document on Global Warming

Peer-Reviewed Survey Finds Majority Of Scientists Skeptical Of Global Warming Crisis

Money, Politics and the Science of Global Warming

Alarmists Change the Data to Support Global Warming Claims

More on the IPCC's Latest Leaked Document on Global Warming

Terence Corcoran of the Trono Globe and Mail has some thoughts here. A very telling quote:

At the Global Warming Policy Foundation in London, David Whitehouse zeroed in on the AR5’s graphic recognition that its previous computer-temperature warnings have failed to materialize. Models projected rises over the last two decades, when in fact no increase has taken place.

Others piped in on other issues. Roger Pielke Jr., of the University of Colorado, said AR5 amounts to an “almost complete reversal” of the previous claims regarding trends in hurricanes, drought, and floods. The IPCC now has “low confidence” that hurricanes have increased: “Current data sets indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency.”

I'd say the confidence intervals around any climate forecasts must be seriously, freaking wide. In non-stat speak that means, "Who knows what's gonna happen?"

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More on Global Warming

Even IPCC Is Abandoning Debunked Global Warming Hoax

Climate Change - UNIPCC Turns Sceptic On Cyclones, Floods And Droughts

More on Global Warming

It looks mighty confusing out there to me. People I know and trust are on both sides of the issue. It seems pretty clear to me that lots of glaciers in some parts of the world are receding. At the same time there are other parts of the world where there is some ice build-up. And year-to-year fluctuations seriously mask the long-term trends, if there are any.

Apparently measures of global temperature are better now than they were a decade or two ago when they were rising in part because of urban sprawl reaching the weather stations and leading to artificially higher temperatures. And apparently these revised measures are not showing much of an increase over the past decade or so. 

I really don't know what to think. Add to this confusion, the possibility that whatever temperature increases we might be experiencing are somehow related to sunspot and solar storm activity. The upshot may well be that temperatures are rising, somewhat, and that some of this might be due to human activity. But I have no idea if or how much any of this is going on. One thing for sure (at least in my mind): it is not "settled science."

And then bring in the economists who point out that there are benefits to some people if there is global warming and that for those harmed by global warming, it might be more efficient to deal with it than to try to prevent it. 

Here is more in a recent piece by Matt Ridley in the WSJ:

The scientists at the IPCC next year have to choose whether they will admit—contrary to what complex, unverifiable computer models indicate—that the observational evidence now points toward lukewarm temperature change with no net harm. On behalf of all those poor people whose lives are being ruined by high food and energy prices caused by the diversion of corn to biofuel and the subsidizing of renewable energy driven by carboncrats and their crony-capitalist friends, one can only hope the scientists will do so.

In the article, Ridley does seem to be saying at one point that global temperatures may in fact be rising, but very slowly. Other times he points out that they may not have risen much, if at all, during the past decade or two.

The big take-away from the article is that subsidized alternative and bio fuels are costing the economy a whole lot, are a classic example of rent-seeking and cronyism, and are terribly inefficient for dealing with global warming.

Snow? When the Temperatures Are > 20C?

The gubmnt weather office shows very useful radar screens for our area, but the folks there really need to change their precipitation measures from "snow" to "rain". 

Here's a screen shot from this afternoon. Note the word "snow" in the heading and in the scale along the right side, even though the current temperature is 22C [72F].

Windchills

I've been accused of winge-ing and wimping about the temperatures and windchills in Regina, where I'm living this year. Over the past month or so, temperatures here have often been in the -20s(C), and this winter we have had far too many days with lows in the -30s. Windchill measures have been even lower.

Prompted by a Facebook comment from Marilyn, I checked out the record low windchills in Chicago, compared with Regina.

While Regina consistently has lower winter air temperatures than Chicago, when it comes to windchill records, Chicago "wins" hands down: -64C in Chicago [1985] vs. only -59.2C in Regina [1962]. 

There's a reason they call Chicago "The Windy City"!

How Do People Stand Regina Winters?

We had about 2-3 inches of snow yesterday. As usual, the streets weren’t cleared of it, but those blessed guys we hire privately were at the house and cleaned the driveway and walks. Great group!

That may not seem like a lot of snow. But in Regina, there is a thick layer of ice on all the streets, and the city is waiting for global warming to solve its snow-removal problem.

Then we had another 4-5 inches over night. Getting out of the street where we live (the snow plows have been there twice  all winter, which I’m told is twice as often as usual) was “exciting” but doable. And, of course, not even the main streets, not to mention any of the side streets has had any snow removed in the past 36 hours. All this on top of a really nice, thick layer of ice on even the main streets and deep ruts on the side streets makes for unpleasant driving conditions.

We’re expecting another 2-3 inches this afternoon and evening. Getting home from the university pub after my seminar this evening might be a fun challenge.

Also, the temperatures are still down around -20 with windchills nearly -40 (C or F doesn't matter -- they're the same at -40). The highest HIGH temperature in the 5-day forecast is -13C.

I can understand living here for a year or even two or three years –  it is quite an adventure!

But how people face it for eternity is beyond my comprehension.

"I was very happy to get blown up to save the world."

That sentence was uttered, not by a terrorist suicide bomber, but by a child actor in the notorious video "No Pressure". [see this, h/t Jack]

The parallels are disturbing: Children and young people from different walks of life being brain-washed into being willing to sacrifice their lives for a cause.

For another parallel, see this, about some veiled threats against atheists from some Christians in Oklahoma [from Ted Frank, no link available].  

I understand and agree with the need to teach children and youngsters the importance of principles and morality. But killing and threatening to kill those who disagree with you is rarely, if ever, defensible (I was a pacifist for much of my life). I much prefer competition in marketplace for ideas. 

 

More on "No Pressure", the Eco-Fascist Video

I posted the video yesterday, with comments by Ross McKitrick, one of the calmest, most level-headed researchers about climate and the environment that I know of. As one might readily imagine, others  are less reserved with their comments, but some of the better ones are summarized here by Ed Driscoll. Many of the comments reproduced there are witty, others are insightful. And there are several additional examples of tasteless videos produced by various organizations.

Also, Chris Essex, a co-author (with McKitrick) of Taken by Storm, points out in an e-mail message that the very scheme of  the 10:10 video is nonsense:

Aside from the passive-aggressive blood letting, 10% [reduction of carbon use] per year over ten years would take you down to about a third. All of the suggestions that were warmly received in these skits have not the slightest hope of doing this. Turning out the lights and sitting in the dark won't even do it. This is completely empty even for people who are game for the numbers. So we must conclude that this it not about numbers. It's about whether you are with the mindset. Believe or else. 

Addendum: The rabid moralists impose a death fatwah on the non-believers.

  .

More Criticisms of the "Science" of Global Warming and the IPCC

Be skeptical. From The Economist (which has, until recently, been quite mainstream in its lack of skepticism about the science of global warming):

Perhaps the most worrying thing about the PBL [Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency] report, though, is a rather obvious one about which its authors say little. In all ten of the issues that the PBL categorised as major (the original errors on glaciers and Dutch sea level, and the eight others identified in the report), the impression that the reader gets from the IPCC is more strikingly negative than the impression which would have been received if the underlying evidence base had been reflected as the PBL would have wished, with more precise referencing, more narrow interpretation and less authorial judgment. A large rise in heat related deaths in Australia is mentioned without noting that most of the effect is due to population rather than climate change. A claim about forest fires in northern Asia seems to go further than the evidence referred to—in this case a speech by a politician—would warrant.

The Netherlands look more floodable, Asian glaciers more fragile. A suspicion thus gains ground that the way in which the IPCC sythesises, generalises snd checks its findings may systematically favour adverse outcomes in a way that goes beyond just serving the needs of policy makers. Anecdotally, authors bemoan fights to keep caveats in place as chapters are edited, refined and summarised. The PBL report does not prove or indeed suggest systematic bias, and it stresses that it has found nothing that should lead the parliament of the Netherlands, or anyone else, to reject the IPCC’s findings. But the panel set up to look at the IPCC’s workings by Dr Pachauri and Mr Ban should ask some hard questions about systematic tendencies to accentuate the negative.

Astounding Conspicuous Consumption from a Major Re-Distributionist

Al Gore buys his FOURTH mansion?? From the National Post (relying on the LATimes):

 The Los Angeles Times reported recently:  

Former Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, have added a Montecito-area property to their real estate holdings, reports the Montecito Journal.

The couple spent $8,875,000 on an ocean-view villa on 1.5 acres with a swimming pool, spa and fountains, a real estate source familiar with the deal confirms. The Italian-style house has six fireplaces, five bedrooms and nine bathrooms. 

This makes four mega-homes for the Gores, who have made vast amounts of money urging people to reduce the amount of energy they consume. It's safe to say approximately everyone in the world (give or take a plutocrat) has fewer mega-homes and uses less energy than the Gores.

I'm astounded that this guy hasn't been embarrassed by all this extravagance. 

Green-Foolery at the Olympics

Speed-skating at the 2010 Olympics was delayed several times as the ice managers tried to deal with the new, electric ice surface refinishing machines. It turned out that these new “green” machines left grooves and puddles in the ice. Finally, authorities had the good sense to import a propane-powered standard zamboni to use for the remainder of the speed-skating events. For more, see this (h/t Eva).

And keep in mind that depending on how the electricity is generated and stored, it isn’t all that clear that electric-powered zambonis are any greener than the traditional ones.

More Global Warming Shenanigans?

From The Times (UK) [h/t KL]:

A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.

Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report.

It turns out the Himalayan glaciers have probably been melting slowly in recent years, but there is no way they could possibly disappear by 2035. To repeat what turned out to be unfounded speculation that the glaciers were melting that fast was just plain shoddy and lazy on the part of the IPCC.

Just to be clear, this bit of evidence does not refute hypotheses of global warming. It just highlights the bad science and the politicized nature of that bad science.

A Brief History of Settled Science

From the Weekly Standard via Portal of Ideas

Conrad Black on Copenhagen

From his National Post retrospective about the past decade,

The heads of government fellowship will pat itself hydraulically on the head and back, and money will be handed over to the toads of despotism when pigs fly and shrimps sing.     

This must be the supreme coruscation of what Malcolm Muggeridge christened the “great liberal death-wish;” a canard about a fraud, invoked to impoverish the world’s advanced countries in favour of its most rancid despotisms, which have already squandered and embezzled a trillion dollars of Western aid; all for a nonsensical purpose, solemnly agreed to, and then ignored.

h/t Jack

-59 with the Wind Chill in EdmontonI'm going geocaching!

According to the Globe and Mail, the temperature in Edmonton reached -46 yesterday morning with wind chill of -59. There was some fascinating ice fog in parts of the city yesterday.

It is slightly warmer here today, so I think I might go out geocaching.... The temperature this morning is -32, and the forecast high for today is -28.

After last year's experience here in Edmonton, Ms. Eclectic thinks this is a plot to punish people who travel early to avoid peak Christmas fares. And after last year, our nieces and nephew are convinced our visits are related to the cold weather in Edmonton, pointing out that temperatures are forecast to rise to zero (C) next weekend, after we are back in Ontario.

Gubmnt Intervention in Climate Science

My friend MA sent me this link from the Times which reports the UK Met weather office is going to take three years to re-evaluate weather and temperature data for the past 160 years. Be sure to read the last sentence quoted below:

The Met Office plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by leaked e-mails.

The new analysis of the data will take three years, meaning that the Met Office will not be able to state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012.

The Met Office database is one of three main sources of temperature data analysis on which the UN’s main climate change science body relies for its assessment that global warming is a serious danger to the world. This assessment is the basis for next week’s climate change talks in Copenhagen aimed at cutting CO2 emissions.

The Government is attempting to stop the Met Office from carrying out the re-examination, arguing that it would be seized upon by climate change sceptics.

No foolin'.
So much for the pursuit of truth. So much for the apolitical ivory tower.

Global-Warming Skepticism

As most regular readers of EclectEcon know, I have tried to maintain an open mind about global warming, but I have been concerned about the infusion of political agendae into the debate. Whenever I read work by colleagues Ross McKitrick and Chris Essex, I become more skeptical about:

1. Whether there has actually been any global warming in the past two or three decades overall; and if there has,
2. Whether global warming has been caused by humans and not long cycles or sunspot activity; and even if it has been caused by humans,
3. What the best strategy is for dealing with it. I have at times favoured Pigouvian taxes on CO2 emissions; at other times I have suggested it might be more efficient to wait and then, if necessary, build dikes and levees.

When I see photos of the Athabasca Glacier and how much it has receded over the past two decades, I become concerned about global warming. At the same time, I realize that warming in one part of the earth does not imply overall global warming. And the growing evidence that there has been no global warming for at least the past decade makes one cautious about any assertions that global warming is "settled science".

The recent disclosures of the academic shenanigans of the global-warming in group certainly add to my skepticism. Of course this type of skulduggery goes on all the time in academia. Fortunately, it is often exposed for what it is, too.

For some excellent pieces and links about the latest twists in the global warming saga, see this by Craig Newmark, where he quotes the following. It is a bit strong in its rhetoric, but it also raises some very important points for consideration:

In fact, when scientists become politicians but continue to pretend to be doing science, that is the real crime. The theory being promoted by these men was being used to justify government actions that would result in greatly diminished future economic growth of the most powerful economy on earth (and the rest of the world as well). It would make it more difficult and less affordable to address any real problems that might be caused in the future by a change in climate, whether due to human activity or other causes. It could impoverish millions in the future, with little actual change in adverse climate effects. And when such a theory has the potential to do so much unjustified harm, and it has a fraudulent basis, who are the real criminals against humanity?

Global Warming? Did Somebody Cook the Data?

When I see the retreating glaciers in certain parts of the world, I can understand why so many people find it so easy to accept the fear that global warming will soon cause major problems for many human beings. And yet the overall evidence that the earth is warming is spotty, at best. And now it looks as if some of the most popular evidence supporting the global warming hypothesis was not just incorrect but possibly even fudged or cooked.

Ross McKitrick is a calm, pleasant, careful kind of guy. I worked with him while I was on leave a couple of years ago. He is not a firebrand. And yet, here is an illustrative paragraph from one of his recent pieces [h/t Craig Newmark]:

I have been probing the arguments for global warming for well over a decade. In collaboration with a lot of excellent coauthors I have consistently found that when the layers get peeled back, what lies at the core is either flawed, misleading or simply non-existent. The surface temperature data is [sic] a contaminated mess with a significant warm bias, and as I have detailed elsewhere the IPCC fabricated evidence in its 2007 report to cover up the problem. Climate models are in gross disagreement with observations, and the discrepancy is growing with each passing year. The often-hyped claim that the modern climate has departed from natural variability depended on flawed statistical methods and low-quality data. The IPCC review process, of which I was a member last time, is nothing at all like what the public has been told: Conflicts of interest are endemic, critical evidence is systematically ignored and there are no effective checks and balances against bias or distortion.

For more, see Taken by Storm, a book about global warming by Ross McKitrick and Chris Essex.

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Global Cooling and Its Frustrations

Scott Sumner reports that many climatologists are now predicting the earth will cool for the next two decades before it begins to warm (go to the end of this posting):

I love hot weather.  But now climate experts are suggesting that there may be one or two decades of cold weather before the heat arrives.  Great, so I get to suffer the adverse economic consequences of futilely trying to stave off global warming, only to drop dead right before it warms up.  And I live in Boston.

Just shoot me.

Serious Questions about Wind Turbines

A recent C.D.Howe Institute release, authored by Michael Trebilcock, raises serious questions about the efficacy and efficiency of wind turbines. His five major objections are:

1. Industrial Wind Turbines Have Minimal Impact on Carbon Emissions
2. Industrial Wind Turbines Are Uneconomic
3. Industrial Wind Turbines Cause Insufficiently Researched Health Effects
4. Industrial Wind Turbines Have Adverse Effects on Adjacent Property Values
5. The Decision-making Process is Undemocratic and Will Undermine Efficient Regulation

Trebilcock raises important questrions in his explanations, but I especially like his conclusion, in which he emphasizes how bad politicians are at picking winners:

Good Politics, Bad Policy
In debates over climate change, and in particular subsidies to renewable energy, there are two kinds of green. First there are some environmental greens who view the problem as so urgent that all measures that may have some impact on greenhouse gas emissions should be undertaken immediately, whatever their cost or their impact on the economy and employment.16 Then there are the fiscal greens, who being cool to carbon taxes and cap-and-trade systems that make polluters pay, favour massive public subsidies to themselves for renewable energy projects, whatever their relative impact on greenhouse gas emissions. These two groups are motivated by different kinds of green. The only point of convergence between them is their support for massive subsidies to renewable energy (such as wind turbines). This unholy alliance of these two kinds of greens (doomsdayers and rent seekers) – a classic Baptist-Bootlegger coalition, harking back to the Prohibition era – makes for very effective, if opportunistic, politics (as reflected in the Ontario government’s Green Energy Act), just as it makes for lousy public policy: politicians attempt to pick winners at our expense in a rapidly-moving technological landscape, instead of creating a socially efficient set of incentives to which we can all respond. (emphasis added)

More Reasons to be Skeptical about Global Warming

Another message from Patrick Carroll, in which he provides links to other studies that criticize the group-think of those who are convinced global warming is a serious, human-caused problem. This message is in response to my having mentioned that Chris Essex is a current colleague and that Ross McKitrick and I were colleagues last year.

I am familiar with Ross McKitrick’s work. His brilliant collaboration with Steven McIntyre to expose the statistical errors behind the now discredited “hockey stick” graph of Michael Mann et al was a masterpiece of mathematical sleuthing, which led to the IPCC’s abandonment of the graph in its 2007 report.

 

Mr. McIntyre has his own web site, Climate Audit, where more examples of the faulty use of statistics by the IPCC and others are discussed. See http://www.climateaudit.org/

 

A recent paper by Christopher Monckton further illustrates how the IPCC and its supporters have been using statistical manipulation to fool the unwary into believing that relatively short-term changes in climate and such things as ice melt are “alarming” and can be extrapolated far into the future. Such tactics are nothing more than scientific propaganda.

 

See http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/monckton/temperature_co2_change_scientific_briefing.pdf

...

Bias and the Lack of Scientific Approach at The Weather Network

A few months ago, I wrote that over the past few years The Weather Network has presented many items about global warming, but has never presented any of the facts or arguments provided by the global warming skeptics. To my knowledge, not even once.

Last week I received an e-mail message from Patrick Carroll, a meteorologist who is also concerned about the biases of The Weather Network. Here is his message, reproduced with his permission:

I came across your blog site while searching for evidence that other people were aware of the bias the Weather Network exhibited towards anything contrary to the prevailing “wisdom” of the IPCC theory of man-made or anthropogenic global warming (AGW).

I was a meteorologist for Environment Canada for 32 years before retiring. As such, the issue of AGW caught my attention a few years ago when Al Gore’s Academy Award winning (and now thoroughly discredited) film, An Inconvenient Truth, appeared. I began to suspect that something was terribly wrong with the underlying premise behind the film when “The Great Global Warming Swindle” appeared on the Internet. Since then, I have armed myself with considerable additional knowledge about what drives the global climate and found abundant evidence that the IPCC is indeed, in the words of former IPCC reviewer Dr. Vincent Gray, “fundamentally corrupt”.

In January of 2007 I sent an e-mail to Deanna Langton of the Weather Network enquiring as to why they were not presenting more balanced discussions on the topic of AGW. I had expected that an organization supposedly comprised mainly of people of scientific training and background would be less likely to favour one side or the other on this contentious topic than the mainstream media. Was I ever mistaken!

I mentioned the frequent appearances of media icon Dr. David Suzuki to the exclusion of anyone from the other side of the issue. She assured me that the Weather Network would give equal consideration to having so-called global warming “skeptics” have their say. I’m still waiting.

I sent another e-mail to the president of the Weather Network in December of 2008 pointing out that they had still not done anything to present a more balanced view on the topic of AGW and listed numerous examples of where the IPCC theory had fallen into disrepute including evidence that global warming had stopped in 1998 and that a cooling trend had begun since 2002 despite rising atmospheric CO2 levels. I never received a reply.

It is indeed unfortunate that Canadians have been grievously misled by a compliant mainstream media and political leaders, who have failed to perform due diligence on anything the IPCC and its supporters have said. The entire issue of AGW has become politicized to the point where those scientists trying to bring attention to the flaws in the IPCC argument have been unfairly vilified and threatened by the Gestapo-like propaganda and tactics of the radical environmental green-shirts. This is not the way that issues of a scientific nature should be discussed and should not be the basis for the formation of government policy on environmental matters.

The IPCC was never interested in determining the true nature of what drives the Earth’s climate, which is why the panel ignored long observed historical relationships between such things as solar cycles and our global climate. The IPCC was only interested in proving that man-made emissions of CO2 were responsible for the global warming of the latter half of the past century. To that extent, the panel used doctored climate statistics and the output of unproven and unreliable computer models to fabricate its alarmist prediction of runaway global warming.

It is only in the past few years that the flawed nature of the panel’s methods has been uncovered to the point where there are now tens of thousands of scientists world-wide who condemn the panel’s theory as seriously flawed. That global temperatures have been cooling since 1998 despite rising atmospheric CO2 levels should be raising questions in the minds of politicians about the validity of the IPCC theory and that attempts to control man-made CO2 would be an exorbitantly costly exercise in climate moderation futility.

The President of Verity Management Services sent the following letter to President Obama warning him that the administration’s plan to tax carbon emissions was a bad idea because there is growing evidence that our sun is entering what he calls a period of “solar hibernation” that would result in major global cooling instead of warming.

http://www.spaceandscience.net/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/obamapresidentfinalappeal03-2-09.doc

 The effect of the 206-year solar cycle mentioned would take us back to a time of the Dalton Minimum, which was also suggested by geologist David Archibald in his paper on solar cycle 24. Mr. Archibald’s prediction for solar cycle 24 seems to working out far better than that of NASA’s Dr. Hathaway, who failed to predict the sun’s drawn out period of sunspot minimum at the end of cycle 23.

 http://www.warwickhughes.com/agri/pastandfuture2.pdf .

 Another interesting study of the 206-year cycle concerns the disappearance of the Mayan civilization:

 http://ess.geology.ufl.edu/hodell/Reprints/pg16-22MAYA1.pdf

 Obviously, global cooling of this magnitude would have a marked effect on agriculture across the temperate zones. Developing grain variants that can resist colder weather and shorter growing seasons takes time, and that time has been wasted working instead on variants that can withstand greater heat and drought, all because non climate scientists were deceived by the IPCC predictions. But that’s what you get when you allow science to be politicized, as Dr. Tim Ball suggests:

 http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/9177

 It is sad that Canadians have been conned by the IPCC, the mainstream media and organizations such as the Weather Network into buying the hoax of AGW. Much money and time has been squandered on attempts to curb, sequester and demonize a harmless atmospheric trace gas that is essential to all life on earth. The public will soon be looking for scapegoats if global cooling continues to manifest itself at a faster rate. They won’t have to look any farther than their television sets to find one of the primary agents complicit in this global fraud.