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Recent Academy of Sciences Reports on Climate Change were Partially Funded by CIA

By Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | February 17, 2015

A voluminous scientific study on climate change and man-made possibilities of altering it was funded by several federal agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The CIA’s decision to partially fund the research left at least one expert who participated in the study a little uneasy.

Scientist Alan Robock at Rutgers University told The Guardian the CIA’s investment in the $630,000 study “makes me really worried who is going to be in control” of efforts to stem the impact of climate change.

In addition to the CIA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Energy, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration funded the National Academy of Sciences research that produced two reports within the study.

One report addressed ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and the other looked at ways to alter cloud cover or change the planet’s surface to make it reflect more sunlight back into space.

The CIA never explained to the academy why it was funding the project.

But Robock became suspicious after two CIA consultants contacted him inquiring about the possibility of another country gaining control of the weather.

“They said: ‘We are working for the CIA and we’d like to know if some other country was controlling our climate, would we be able to detect it?’ I think they were also thinking in the back of their minds: ‘If we wanted to control somebody else’s climate could they detect it?’” he told The Guardian.

He said that he told the consultants that any attempt to generate large, climate-changing clouds would be noticed by weather satellites or other equipment used to monitor the atmosphere.

The CIA didn’t respond to a press inquiry about its involvement and has previously refused to confirm its role in the study. In 2013, CIA spokesman Edward Price told Mother Jones: “It’s natural that on a subject like climate change the Agency would work with scientists to better understand the phenomenon and its implications on national security.”

Using the weather as a weapon is forbidden under international law, per the Environmental Modification Convention of 1978.

The agency’s inquiry left Robock concerned. “I’d learned of lots of other things the CIA had done that didn’t follow the rules,” he said. “I thought that wasn’t how my tax money was spent.”

The CIA opened its own climate change office in 2009 but shut it down three years later after criticism from some Republicans who called it a distraction from the agency’s focus on combatting terrorism.

To Learn More:

Spy Agencies Fund Climate Research in Hunt for Weather Weapon, Scientist Fears (by Ian Sample, The Guardian )

CIA Backs $630,000 Scientific Study on Controlling Global Climate (by Dana Liebelson and Chris Mooney, Mother Jones )

C.I.A. Closes Its Climate Change Office (by John Broder, New York Times )

February 17, 2015 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Climate “Science”: Consensus or Conformity?

An Indictment

By David Small | Climate Etc. | February 15, 2015

I started a PhD program in Environmental Engineering because I worried about climate change. It didn’t take long for me to become a skeptic.

My first paper, a study about precipitation intensity over the U.S., was rejected by reviewers because it contradicted the climate model projections. Though they could find nothing wrong with the methodology, they decided observational data must be flawed because climate models couldn’t possibly be wrong and wrote that the paper could not be published.

I then started reading the atmospheric science literature about precipitation trends. It was clear to me that the theory about changes in precipitation intensity were designed to explain climate model results that didn’t mesh with observations. When I found that changes in observed precipitation were largest in autumn, and did not find the same patterns of precipitation in climate models outputs, I really became skeptical about the use of climate models. When I started working with climate models and saw how poorly they reproduce precipitation patterns, I was forced into the realization that the “science” was being fit to the models and that the models were not very realistic. From my perspective, this runs contrary to the scientific method.

After finishing my PhD in Environmental Engineering, I earned a M.S. in Atmospheric Science and started working on a PhD. As I learned more about meteorology and atmospheric dynamics, I started to see the contradictions in the climate change discussion.

I had another paper refused by a high profile journal because it showed that cold air is required to produce the conditions that cause storm surges in the western Canadian arctic. That suggestion really seemed to upset the editor (an engineer) who wouldn’t even send it out for review. My later research has shown the importance of strong jets and cold air in building the blocking ridges that cause the extreme weather we’ve seen over the last two autumns/winters. The claims that are being made that a warming of the arctic will lead to warmer conditions in the mid-latitudes because it will cause more blocking are preposterous because strong jets are needed to support the blocking ridges. I received dozens of letters saying my published paper must be wrong because I suggest that strong jets, not weak jets, cause blocking. Most of the claims being made by climate change advocates appear to run contrary to basic meteorology.

As I’ve been attacked personally and professionally for offering contrary views, I decided to leave the field. I will defend my Atmospheric Science PhD thesis and walk away. It’s become clear to me that it is not possible to undertake independent research in any area that touches upon climate change if you have to make your living as a professional scientist on government grant money or have to rely on getting tenure at a university. The massive group think that I have encountered on this topic has cost me my career, many colleagues and has damaged my reputation among the few people I know in the field.

I’m leaving to work in the financial industry. It’s a sad day when you feel that you have to leave a field that you are passionately interested in because you fear that you won’t be able to find a job once your views become widely known. Until free thought is allowed in the climate sciences, I will consider myself a skeptic of catastrophic human induced global warming.

February 17, 2015 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

How Science Died at the World Trade Center

By Kevin Ryan | Dig Within | February 15, 2015

Science has been misused for political purposes many times in history. However, the most glaring example of politically motivated pseudoscience—that employed by U.S. government scientists to explain the destruction of the World Trade Center (WTC)—continues to be ignored by many scientists. As we pass the 10th anniversary of the introduction of that account, it is useful to review historic examples of fake science used for political purposes and the pattern that defines that abuse.

An early example of pseudoscience used to promote a political agenda was the concerted Soviet effort to contradict evolutionary theory and Mendelian inheritance. For nearly 45 years, the Soviet government used propaganda to foster unproven theories of agriculture promoted by its minister of agriculture, Trofim Lysenko. Scientists seeking favor with the Soviet hierarchy produced fake experimental data in support of Lysenko’s false claims. Scientific evidence from the fields of biology and genetics was banned in favor of educational programs that taught only Lysenkoism and many biologists and geneticists were executed or sent to labor camps. This propaganda-fueled program of anti-science continued for over forty years, until 1964, and spread to other countries including China.

In the 2010 book Merchants of Doubt, authors Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway describe several other examples of the misuse of science, spanning from the 1950s to the present. They show how widely respected scientists participated in clearly non-scientific efforts to promote the agendas of big business and big government. Examples include the tobacco industry’s misuse of science to obfuscate the links between smoking and cancer, the military industrial complex’s use of scientists to support the scientifically indefensible Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), and several abuses of environmental science.

As Oreskes and Conway made clear, science is about evidence. “It is about claims that can be, and have been, tested through scientific research—experiment, experience, and observation—research that is then subject to critical review by a jury of scientific peers.” In science, if experiments performed do not support a hypothesis, that hypothesis must be rejected. If conclusions fail to pass peer-review due to a lack of supportive evidence or the discovery of evidence that directly contradicts them, those conclusions must be rejected.

From Lysenkoism through the examples given by Oreskes and Conway, politically motivated pseudoscience demonstrates a pattern of characteristics as follows.

  1. There is a lack of experiments.
  2. The results of experiments are ignored or contradicted in the conclusions.
  3. There is either no peer-review or peer-reviewer concerns are ignored.
  4. The findings cannot be replicated or falsified due to the withholding of data.
  5. False conclusions are supported by marketing or media propaganda.
  6. Hypotheses that are supported by the evidence are ignored.

All six of these characteristics of pseudo-science are exhibited by the U.S. government investigation into what happened at the WTC on September 11th, 2001. That investigation was conducted by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) and it had much in common with the examples given by Oreskes and Conway. As with the false science that supported tobacco use, millions of lives were lost as a result—in this case through the “War on Terror.” Like support for the Strategic Defense Initiative, the abuses were focused on supporting the military-industrial complex. And as with the environmental examples, NIST’s manipulations affect everyone on the planet because they prop up a never-ending war.

In terms of historical experience, the destruction of the three WTC skyscrapers was unprecedented. No tall building had ever experienced global collapse for any reason other than explosive demolition and none ever has since that time. In terms of observation, nearly everyone who examines the videos from the day recognizes the many similarities to explosive demolition. Perhaps the most compelling evidence in favor of the demolition theory is that the NIST WTC Reports, which took up to seven years to produce, exhibit all six of the characteristics of politically motivated pseudoscience.

The lack of experiment:

NIST performed no physical experiments to support its conclusions on WTC Building 7. Its primary conclusion, that a few steel floor beams experienced linear thermal expansion thereby shearing many structural connections, could have easily been confirmed through physical testing but no such testing was performed. Moreover, other scientists had performed such tests in the past but since the results did not support NIST’s conclusions, those results were ignored (see peer-review comments below).

The results of experiments were ignored or contradicted in the conclusions:

  • For the Twin Towers, steel temperature tests performed on the few steel samples saved suggested that the steel reached only about 500 degrees Fahrenheit. This is more than one thousand degrees below the temperature needed to soften steel and make it malleable—a key requirement of NIST’s hypothesis. NIST responded by exaggerating temperatures in its computer model.
  • Another key requirement of NIST’s explanation for the Twin Towers was that floor assemblies had sagged severely under thermal stress. Floor model tests conducted by my former company Underwriters Laboratories showed that the floor assemblies would sag only 3 to 4 inches, even after removal of all fireproofing and exposure to much higher temperatures than existed in the buildings. NIST responded by exaggerating the results—claiming up to 42-inches worth of floor assembly sagging in its computer model.
  • After criticism of its draft report in April 2005, NIST quietly inserted a short description of shotgun tests conducted to evaluate fireproofing loss in the towers. These results also failed to support NIST’s conclusions because the shotgun blasts were not reflective of the distribution or trajectories of the aircraft debris. Additionally, the tests suggested that the energy required to “widely dislodge” fireproofing over five acre-wide floors—required by NIST’s findings—was simply not available.

There was no peer review and public comments from peers were ignored:

NIST published its own WTC reports and therefore its work was not subject to peer-review as is the case for all legitimate science. The people and companies involved in the NIST investigation were either government employees or contractors dependent on government work and were therefore not objective participants.

In terms of indirect peer-review, the international building construction community has made no changes to building construction standards in response to NIST’s officially cited root causes for the WTC destruction. Furthermore, no existing buildings have been retrofitted to ensure that they do not fail from those alleged causes.

NIST provided a period for public comment on its draft reports but the comments provided by those not beholden to government were not supportive of NIST’s findings. In some cases, as with NIST’s linear expansion claim for WTC 7, independent scientists submitted comments about physical tests they had performed (which NIST had not) that directly contradicted NIST’s findings.

There was one important exception to NIST’s ignoring of public comments. After a physics teacher’s well-publicized comments, NIST was forced to admit that WTC 7 was in free-fall for a vertical distance equivalent to at least eight stories of the building. Structural engineers have since noted that many hundreds of high-strength steel bolts and steel welds would have had to vanish instantaneously for an 8-story section of the building to fall without any resistance.

The findings cannot be replicated or falsified due to the withholding of data:

NIST will not share it computer models with the public. A NIST spokesman declared, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, that revealing the computer models would “jeopardize public safety.” Because NIST’s conclusions depend entirely on those computer models, they cannot be verified or falsified by independent scientists.

False conclusions are supported by media or marketing propaganda:

As with the Soviet propaganda machine that supported Lysenkoism and the tobacco industry’s marketing propaganda, NIST’s pseudoscience was fully and uncritically supported by the mainstream media. Hearst Publications, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and Skeptic magazine are examples of media that went to great lengths to stifle any questioning of the official account and divert attention from the glaring discrepancies.

NIST depended on that media support as indicated by the timing of its release of reports. NIST’s final report appeared to be scheduled for dual political purposes, to coincide with the seventh anniversary of 9/11 and to give the appearance of finished business at the end of the Bush Administration. The timing of NIST’s other reports coincided with political events as well. These included the draft report on the towers in October 2004—just before the election, the final report on the towers—just before the fourth anniversary of 9/11, and NIST’s first “responses to FAQs”—just before the fifth anniversary. All of them appeared to involve politically motivated release dates.

The report release dates allowed time for the media to quickly present the official story while public interest was high, but did not allow time for critical review. With the report on WTC 7, the public was given just three weeks prior to September 11th, 2008 to comment on a report that was nearly seven years in the making.

Hypotheses that are supported by the evidence were ignored:

Throughout its seven-year investigation, NIST ignored the obvious hypothesis for the destruction of the WTC buildings—demolition. That evidence includes:

  • Free-fall or near-free fall acceleration of all three buildings (now acknowledged by NIST for WTC 7)
  • Photographic and video evidence demonstrating the characteristics of demolition for both the Twin Towers and WTC 7

The WTC reports produced by NIST represent the most obvious example of politically motivated pseudoscience in history. The physical experiments NIST performed did not support its conclusions. The reports were not peer-reviewed and public comments that challenged the findings were ignored. NIST will not share its computer models—the last supposed evidence that supports its conclusions—with the public and therefore its conclusions are not verifiable.

These glaring facts should be readily recognizable by any scientist and, given the unprecedented impact of the resulting War on Terror, this abuse of science should be the basis for a global outcry from the scientific community. The fact that it is not—with even Oreskes and Conway ignoring this most obvious example—indicates that many scientists today still cannot recognize false science or cannot speak out about it for fear of social stigma. It’s possible that our society has not suffered enough to compel scientists to move out of their comfort zones and challenge such exploitation of their profession. If so, the abuse of science for political and commercial purposes will only get worse.

February 15, 2015 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Spinning with a Changing Climate

ClimateChangePredictions

A new website spoofs preposterous claims regarding climate change:

“I’ve started a website with the idea of making it entertaining as well as informative. The website presents global warming predictions that have been made over the past 40 or so years, especially predictions that are either contradictory or alternatively plainly ridiculous and thus amusing.”

Excerpts:

Earth speeds up

Climate change can also affect the Earth’s spin. Previously, Felix Landerer of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. and colleagues showed that global warming would cause Earth’s mass to be redistributed towards higher latitudes. Since that pulls mass closer to the planet’s spin axis, it causes the planet to rotate faster – just as an ice skater spins faster when she pulls her arms towards her body. – New Scientist 20 Aug 2009

Earth slows down

Belgian scientists have identified a hitherto unsuspected benefit of global warming – more time for all of us. They say increasing levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere will slow the Earth’s rotation. They used computer models to analyse the effect of adding 1% more CO2 to the atmosphere annually. – BBC News, 12 Feb 2002


failed-climate-predictions

February 10, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

FDA fails to report fraud in clinical trials – study

RT | February 10, 2015

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) routinely fails to report evidence of fraud or misconduct when it inspects the way researchers conduct clinical trials, leaving the public unaware of which research is credible and which isn’t.

Researchers at New York University found that in dozens of published papers where the FDA had uncovered faults in clinical trials, only three ever indicated that violations occurred. In a stem cell trial, for example, all patients were said to have experienced improvement – despite one having a foot amputated.

The New York University study examined 57 clinical trials that received a notice of violation from the FDA for poor record keeping, false information, and poor patient study. Researchers found that findings from those clinical trials were used in 78 published papers – but only in three instances were the faults in the clinical trials mentioned in the papers.

In the other cases, none of the published papers containing data from faulty trials were corrected or retracted.

“These are major things,” Professor Charles Seife, the study’s author, told Reuters. “No one really knows unless you go through these documents that anyone is question the integrity of the trials.”

In one case, an entire clinical trial was considered unreliable by the FDA, but the published paper didn’t mention the violation at all. In another trial, researchers covered up a patient’s death.

Of the 57 published clinical trials, 39 percent had evidence of false information, 25 percent reported adverse events, 61 percent had record keeping problems, and 35 percent failed to protect the safety of the patient or had issues with oversight or informed consent.

“The FDA has repeatedly hidden evidence of scientific fraud not just from the public, but also from its most trusted scientific advisers, even as they were deciding whether or not a new drug should be allowed on the market,” Seife wrote at Slate. “For an agency devoted to protecting the public from bogus medical science, the FDA seems to be spending an awful lot of effort protecting the perpetrators of bogus science from the public.”

Seife said his team could have uncovered even more instances from the 600 clinical trials mentioned in the documents, but most of the documents obtained from the FDA were heavily redacted. “In some cases, you can’t even tell which drug is being tested,” he said.

Every year, the FDA inspects several hundred clinical sites performing biomedical research on human participants and occasionally finds evidence of violations of good clinical practices and misconduct. The study said, however, that the FDA has no systematic method for communicating these findings to the scientific community, and its findings go unremarked in peer-reviewed literature.

In a statement to Reuters, the FDA said it is “committed to increasing the transparency of compliance and enforcement activities with the goal of enhancing the public’s understanding of the FDA’s decision, promoting the accountability of the FDA, and fostering an understanding among regulated industry about the need for consistently safe and high-quality products.”

READ MORE:

US spends most on this drug… and no one knows how it works

GMO potato seeks FDA approval, opponents say safety risks remain

February 10, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Major climate science reporting fail by Minnesota Public Radio

By Sierra Rayne | American Thinker | February 3, 2015

In an article at the Grand Forks Herald, Minnesota Public Radio goes all in on climate hysteria – and fails in what is simply terrible science journalism by a public broadcaster.

The fact-checking can start with the opening sentences:

St. Patrick’s Day 2012 was the crowning moment of one of Minnesota’s mildest winters: Jubilant parade spectators wore flip flops, Miss Shamrock beamed in sleeveless, emerald satin, and the beer never tasted so refreshing as temperatures hit 80 degrees.

Three months later, the dazzling sunlight was nowhere to be found when rain sheets pummeled the Duluth area. Muddy torrents of chocolate, fuming floodwaters tore through town, leaving shock and devastation.

Both extremes happened in a Minnesota our descendants never knew. It’s warmer, especially in the winter, and rising global temperatures have stacked the deck in favor of heavier rains.

The hottest temperature during that March 2012 in Duluth was 75 degrees. Not even close to the record of 81 degrees set in 1946.

But, the alarmists may say, St. Patrick’s Day 2012 was on March 17, and we’ve never seen temperatures this high on that date before. Perhaps, but one day in one month in one year doesn’t make a trend. Over the past century, and also since 1970 and during the past three decades, there has not been any sign of a significant trend in maximum temperatures on March 17 for the Duluth area.  Same goes with absolute maximum temperatures during March. No significant trends over any of these time frames, and during the last 30 years, the correlation is negative – toward lower extreme maximum temperatures in March.

In the Minneapolis-St. Paul region, the 80 degrees in March 2012 was tied with 1967 as only the fifth highest March extreme maximum temperature on record, behind 1986, 1968, 1910, and 2007.  No significant trends in maximum temperatures for March 17, either, and the last three decades have a negative correlation toward lower – not higher – extreme maximum temperatures in this month.

Thus, the problems in this article start early. And they continue.

The growing season in the Twin Cities is several weeks longer than it was even in the 1970s.

This classifies as cherry-picking 101, and it is egregious science journalism. Has there been a statistically significant increase in the growing season for the Twin Cities since the 1970s?  Yes.  But here is the growing season length dating back to when records began in 1873.

Since records began in the 1870s, there is an overall negative correlation toward a shorter – not longer – growing season in the Twin Cities region. Even with the increase in growing season length since the 1970s, the area is only back up to where it historically was before the 1970s.

Between 1873 and 1969, the area averaged a growing season length of 165 days. The average since 1970 has been 164 days.  Some climate change.

Then there are the extreme rains:

In Minnesota and the Midwest generally, 37 percent more rain falls in these big 2.5-inch-plus storms than did 50 years ago, said researcher Ken Kunkel of the National Climatic Data Center in North Carolina. ‘We’ve found that the last decade actually has the largest number of these events since the network began in the late 19th Century.’

There are no significant trends in the number of days per year with 2.5+ inches of precipitation for any of the state’s climate subregions in the National Weather Service database. The Twin Cities and Duluth climate areas have the longest records for this metric, and here are the non-existent trends since the early 1870s.

See a climate crisis? No, because there isn’t one. Next issue.

The 2-inch rains historically have come about every five years in a given place. And then there are the really big storms that bring at least 6 or 7 inches of rain over a huge geographic area, with powerful enough spots within the storm dumping 8 inches or more. These types of storms are occurring more frequently, at least partly because warmer air can hold more water.

Two-inch rains come about every five years in the historic record?  No chance. Between 1872 and 1970 for the Duluth region, they came about every 1.5 years (i.e., 0.65 per year on average). Overall from 1872 to 2014, they come about every 1.3 years. For the Twin Cities, the average is 0.93 per year since the 1870s, or one per year.  All a far cry from “about every five years.”

As for the 6- to 7-inch megastorms, the Duluth region has never (at least during recorded history) received 6 inches of precipitation in a day. The record is 5.20 inches, set in 1909, followed by 4.14 inches in 2012 and 4.00 inches in 1876, all of which seems to contradict this claim:

The 2012 storm in Duluth was considered a 500-year event. It overwhelmed culverts and took out streets.

In June 2012, Duluth received 4.14 inches over one day, and 7.25 inches over two consecutive days, with no rain on the third day. But back in July 1909, the city received 5.20 inches in one day, 6.68 inches over two consecutive days, and 7.83 inches over three consecutive days. Ergo, storms of this magnitude have happened before since records began in the late 1800s, leading to the question as whether the 2012 event was really a 500-year event, and if such events are really becoming more common.

The Saint Cloud area’s top four record daily rainfalls all came before 1957, and none was more than 5 inches. The Twin Cities received 9.15 inches in a single day during 1987, and the next three daily rainfall maxima occurred in 1977, 1892, and 1903.  The International Falls region’s record daily rainfall is only 4.82 inches, set back in 1942. The next highest 24-hour totals are from 1966 and 1898.It is certainly debatable whether extreme rain events are on the rise.

Then come the omnipresent concerns over unpredictability, as if weather or climate were ever predictable:

A third facet of the change in Minnesota’s climate, in addition to more heat and bigger storms, is murkier because it involves scientists asking whether things are in fact getting more variable and unpredictable.

For example, because big rainstorms account for a bigger portion of total rainfall, the state can dry out for weeks without reducing annual precipitation.

Some meteorologists call it ‘flash drought.’ Suddenly, after a wet spring, the spigot turns off. The big May 2012 storm in Duluth gave the St. Louis River its highest-ever discharge crest. But six months later, the river was at drought levels.

Actually, both the Twin Cities and Duluth regions have positive correlations since records began in the 1870s – and statistically significant trends over the past century – toward more days per year with precipitation, not less.

Finally, we have the 2012 storm (which was in June, not May) in Duluth that “gave the St. Louis River its highest-ever discharge crest.” Here is the USGS peak streamflow record for the St. Louis River at Scanlon, just upstream from Duluth:

Yes, 2012 set a record, but look at the peak flow trend since the 1970s: declining with no unusual variability aside from the single data point in 2012. One data point does not make climate change.

And about those “drought levels” in the river six months after the flood – which would mean December 2012 – the flow in the river during December was only the 18th lowest on record (i.e., hardly unusual) and almost threefold higher than the record low December flow set back in 1910.  By the way, the trend since records began on the river in 1908 is toward more December flow – not less – so climate change isn’t leading to wintertime “drought” flows on the river, either.

So ends the examination of but one climate change story in a single relatively small newspaper from the American Midwest. There is climate reality, but science journalism by the mainstream media is getting farther away from it.

February 10, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

When Climate Heretics Speak. . .

By Steven Hayward | PowerLine | January 25, 2015

. . . They usually mop the floor with the climatistas. That’s one reason why the climate campaign has resorted to rank conformism and outright bullying.

Matt Ridley offered his observations about the state of things in an article in the London Times a few days ago entitled “My Life as A Climate Lukewarmer.”

I am a climate lukewarmer. That means I think recent global warming is real, mostly man-made and will continue but I no longer think it is likely to be dangerous and I think its slow and erratic progress so far is what we should expect in the future. That last year was the warmest yet, in some data sets, but only by a smidgen more than 2005, is precisely in line with such lukewarm thinking.

This view annoys some sceptics who think all climate change is natural or imaginary, but it is even more infuriating to most publicly funded scientists and politicians, who insist climate change is a big risk. My middle-of-the-road position is considered not just wrong, but disgraceful, shameful, verging on scandalous. I am subjected to torrents of online abuse for holding it, very little of it from sceptics.

I was even kept off the shortlist for a part-time, unpaid public-sector appointment in a field unrelated to climate because of having this view, or so the headhunter thought. In the climate debate, paying obeisance to climate scaremongering is about as mandatory for a public appointment, or public funding, as being a Protestant was in 18th-century England.

Kind friends send me news almost weekly of whole blog posts devoted to nothing but analysing my intellectual and personal inadequacies, always in relation to my views on climate. Writing about climate change is a small part of my life but, to judge by some of the stuff that gets written about me, writing about me is a large part of the life of some of the more obsessive climate commentators. It’s all a bit strange.

There’s more; definitely worth reading the whole thing. … continue

February 2, 2015 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Climate Change ‘Hardest Hit’

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ClimateChangePredictions.org

Mr Dunlop, who’s now with the Association for the study of Peak Oil and Gas, says Australia will be one of the hardest hit by a rise in global temperatures. “We’re one of the driest continents on the earth and the effects on Australia will be more severe than elsewhere.” – ABC News, May 2013

Australia’s top intelligence agency believes south-east Asia will be the region worst affected by climate change by 2030, with decreased water flows from the Himalayan glaciers triggering a ‘cascade of economic, social and political consequences’. The dire outlook was provided by the deputy director of the Office of National Assessments, Heather Smith, in a confidential discussion on the national security implications of climate change with US embassy officials. — Sydney Morning Herald, Dec 2010

The effects of climate change will impact more severely on the economy of Papua New Guinea than on any other in the Pacific, according to a new report by the Asian Development Bank. – ABC News, Nov 2013

Research reports that Bangladesh is one of the hardest hit nations by the impacts of climate change. — UK climate4classrooms.org

There seems to be consensus in the developed world that Africa will be the hardest hit or most affected region, due to anthropogenic climate change. – YouLead Collective, a young generation of climate leaders, Nov 2014

Vietnam is likely to be among the countries hardest hit by climate change, mainly through rising sea levels and changes in rainfall and temperatures. – International Food Policy Research Institute, 2010

Norway’s Minister of the Environment and International Development Erik Solheim stated today that “The Small Island Developing States are among the hardest hit by climate change.”  — as reported by the Norwegian media, Nov 2011

Maldives’ economy hardest hit by climate change: Asian Development Bank. The Maldives is the most at-risk country in South Asia from climate change impacts, said the report titled ‘Assessing the costs of climate change and adaptation in South Asia.’ – Minivan News, Aug 2014

According to the latest data modelling, climate change is likely to have the strongest impact on Scandinavian countries such as Denmark, Norway and Sweden – planetearthherald.com

Bulgaria, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece are the countries that would be worst affected by global warming, according to a European Union report. The EC Joint Research Commission (JRC) report, released on Wednesday, takes into account four significantly sensitive factors: agriculture, river flooding, coastal systems and tourism. — Sofia News Agency, Nov 2009

The economies of southern Europe and the Mediterranean, including Malta, are forecast to suffer the most adverse effects of climate change, according to a new report drawn up by the European Environment Agency. — Primo-europe.eu, July 2010

Climate change is faster and more severe in the Arctic than in most of the rest of the world. The Arctic is warming at a rate of almost twice the global average — panda.org

China’s Poor Farmers Hit Hardest by Climate Change. Declan Conway, a University of East Anglia researcher who has studied climate change’s affect on China’s farmers, told Reuters that people in remote communities in China’s poorer regions are particularly exposed to climate hazards. — Circle Of Blue, Dec 2012

Report: Middle East, African Countries to Be Hardest Hit by Climate Change — CommonDreams, Dec 2012

January 31, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

Obama’s Childish Climate Claims

By Judith Curry | Climate Etc. | January 21, 2015

I would like to address this statement made by the President:

Well, I’m not a scientist, either. But you know what — I know a lot of really good scientists at NASA, and NOAA, and at our major universities. The best scientists in the world are all telling us that our activities are changing the climate, and if we do not act forcefully, we’ll continue to see rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods, and massive disruptions that can trigger greater migration, conflict, and hunger around the globe. The Pentagon says that climate change poses immediate risks to our national security. We should act like it.

And also his tweet:

97% of climate scientists agree: Climate change is real. Denial from Congress is dangerous.

The problem is that President Obama is listening to scientists that are either playing politics with their expertise, or responding to a political mandate from the administration (probably a combination of both). Not just administrators in government labs (e.g. Schmidt, Karl), but think of the scientist networks of John Holdren and John Podesta:  to me the scariest one one is Mann to Romm to Podesta.

So what is wrong with President Obama’s statements as cited above?

  • His statement about humans having exacerbated extreme weather events is not supported by the IPCC
  • The Pentagon is confusing climate change with extreme weather (see above)
  • ‘Climate change is real’ is almost a tautology; climate has always changed and always will, independently of anything humans do.
  • His tweet about ‘97%’ is based on an erroneous and discredited paper [link]
  • As for ‘Denial from Congress is dangerous’, I doubt that anyone in Congress denies that climate changes. The issue of ‘dangerous’ is a hypothetical, and relates to values (not science).

And speaking of the ‘deniers’ in Congress, did anyone spot any errors in the actual science from Senator Inhofe’s rebuttal?

The apparent ‘contract’ between Obama and his administrators to play politics with climate science seems to be a recipe for anti science and premature policies with negative economic consequences that have little to no impact on the climate.

Maybe some day, in a future administration, we can have a grown up conversation about climate change (natural and human caused), the potential risks, and a broad range of policy responses.

January 21, 2015 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Pseudoscience in the service of policy

By Tom Fuller | Lukewarmer’s Way | January 15, 2015

This week has been an education–reviewing the work of Naomi Oreskes, Anderegg, Prall et al, John Cook et al and Stephan Lewandowsky.

Short version–some people who were (mostly) not scientists and certainly don’t know how to do research properly conducted a series of studies that had foregone conclusions supporting their position on climate policy. For Prall, Cook and Lewandowsky the foregone nature of the conclusions was explicit–they wrote on various websites that they were conducting the studies with a predetermined end. For Oreskes it was implicit, but easy to see, as she structured her research carefully, not to show the breadth of opinion on climate change, but rather to conceal it.

I guess I should address Stephan’s potential concerns first–no, I don’t see a conspiracy in the work I’ve reviewed, even though there is a web of mutual citations in the work involved and collaboration between some of the principals.

Oreskes, the ‘purest’ scientist in the bunch, wrote the original paper (Beyond the Ivory Tower) and it served as a template (and was cited as such) for those who came after.

Her ‘original sin’ was one that has destroyed a lot of research studies unintentionally–sample bias. The literature search on which her work was based omitted relevant studies from skeptics. I say that was intentional, but that’s just my opinion. It was a trivial exercise to find numerous studies by skeptics that would have drastically changed her results. My opinion is she knew those studies were there and carefully crafted a keyword search string that would exclude them.

Anderegg, Prall et al were much sloppier and in addition to sample bias made numerous errors in data collection, analysis and other methodological choices. Their study is garbage. The same is true for Cook et al–their 97% consensus claim is utter nonsense. And when Lewandowsky tried to do in primary research what the others did with secondary research, he only introduced a new class of childish mistakes. I have worked in market research for more than 20 years and I’ve made my share of mistakes. I recognize their mistakes. The difference between these amateurs and professionals is that when professionals make mistakes they admit them and work to correct them. This crew just doubled down on their claims and hoped that nobody would dig very deeply. But when I use words like garbage and nonsense, I am not exaggerating. The quality of work that went into these studies is so bad that if anything I’m understating things.

After Climategate, the actions of those supporting the consensus have been increasingly frantic and in most cases, inept. When the marketing departments of NGOs create flawed iconography of polar bears under threat, videos of people blowing up skeptics and trash treasured archeological sites, it’s easy to dismiss these as the mistaken work of people who have adopted a religion, rather than scientific findings.

But when trash is put before the scientific community as the alleged results of research conducted within the norms of science, it is something else, something much worse. It not only damages the effort to understand how our climate is changing and what we should do about it. It damages science.

Numerous studies have shown a very real tendency for studies to be irreplicable and unreproducible. Fraud has been found as well as mistakes.

Climate change is important and will affect the lives of our children. But science is more important and trashing science to win a policy fight over climate change has the potential to do more damage to the human race than any changes we cause to the climate.

January 17, 2015 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

‘Warmest year’, ‘pause’, and all that

By Judith Curry | Climate Etc. | January 16, 2015

So, was 2014 the ‘warmest year’?  Drum roll . . .

NASA has just issued its press release NASA, NOAA find 2014 hottest year in record.   Nothing in the way of technical details, such as warmest by ‘how much’ and ‘is it statistically significant?’

NYTimes ‘breaking news’: 2014 was hottest year on record surpassing 2010 interviews Gavin Schmidt:

With the continued heating of the atmosphere and the surface of the ocean, 1998 is now being surpassed every four or five years, with 2014 being the first time that has happened in a year featuring no real El Niño pattern. Gavin A. Schmidt, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, said the next time a strong El Niño occurs, it is likely to blow away all temperature records.

No word yet from HadCRUT4, I heard we can expect their report next week.  Somewhere I read that Cowtan and Way did NOT expect 2014 to be warmest in their data set?

Berkeley Earth has published a nice analysis of their 2014 data [link].  Summary of their main findings:

1. The global surface temperature average for 2014 was nominally the warmest since the global instrumental record began in 1850; however, within the margin of’error, it’s tied with 2005 and 2010 and so we can’t be certain it set a new record.

2. For the land, 2014 was nominally the 4th warmest year since 1753

3. For the sea, 2014 was the warmest year on record since 1850

4. For the contiguous United States, 2014 ranked nominally as the 38th warmest year on record since 1850.

Some other statements of interest:

Several European countries  set all time records for high annual average temperature, as did the continent of Europe as a whole

The margin of uncertainty we achieved was remarkably small (0.05C with 95% confidence).This was achieved, in part, by the inclusion of data from over 30,000 temperature stations, and by the use of optimized statistical methods. Even so, the highest year could not be distinguished. That is, of course, an indication that the Earth’s average temperature for the last decade has changed very little. 

Meanwhile, the ‘warmest year’ is noticeably missing in the satellite data sets of lower atmospheric temperatures.  Roy Spencer reports that 2014 was third warmest year since 1979, but just barely.

Roz Pidcock has penned an article Explainer: How do scientists measure global temperature, that discusses differences among the analyses.

Capitol Weather Gang has reactions from 20 scientists [link], including a few sensible ones (such as moi).

El Nino?

One of the key aspects of the hype about the ‘warmest year in 2014′ was that 2014 was not even an El Nino year.  Well, there has been a great deal of discussion about this issue on the Tropical ListServ.  Here is what I have taken away from that discussion:

A global circulation response pattern to Pacific convection with many similarities to El Niño has in fact been present since at least June.   Convection to the east of New Guinea is influencing zonal winds in the upper troposphere across the Pacific and Atlantic, looking similar to an El Nino circulation response.

So, is it El Niño? Not quite, according to some conventional indices, but a broader physical definition might be needed to capture the different flavors of El Nino.  A number of scientists are calling for modernizing the ENSO identification system. So I’m not sure how this event might eventually be identified, but for many practical purposes (i.e. weather forecasting), this event is behaving in many ways like an El Nino.

What does this mean for interpreting the ‘almost warmest year’?  Well not much; I think it is erroneous to infer that ‘it must be AGW since 2014 wasn’t even an El Nino year’ is useful reasoning here.

That said, there is definitely some unusual events on the North Pacific, including extreme warm anomalies in the mid-high latitudes, and positive value of the PDO.

Bottom line

Berkeley Earth sums it up well with this statement:

That is, of course, an indication that the Earth’s average temperature for the last decade has changed very little.

The key issue remains the growing discrepancy between the climate model projections and the observations:  2014 just made the discrepancy larger.

Speculation about ‘warmest year’ and end of ‘pause’ implies a near term prediction of surface temperatures – that they will be warmer.  I’ve made my projection – global surface temperatures will remain mostly flat for at least another decade.  However, I’m not willing to place much $$ on that bet, since I suspect that Mother Nature will manage to surprise us. (I will be particularly surprised if the rate of warming in the next decade is at the levels expected by the IPCC.)

Senator Ted Cruz

Senator Ted Cruz is  (R-Texas) was just named to be the chairman of the Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness.  The folks at Slate are not happy: Yup, a Climate Change Denier Will Oversee NASA.  What Could Possibly Go Wrong?  They are particularly up in arms over this statement from Ted Cruz:

The last 15 years, there has been no recorded warming. Contrary to all the theories that—that they are expounding, there should have been warming over the last 15 years. It hasn’t happened.

Here is what  Slate has to say:

This is, to put it mildly, what comes out of the south end of a north-facing bull. Yes, the Earth has warmed over the past 15 years, and the science is incredibly, unequivocally clear about that. Anyone making this claim either doesn’t know what they’re talking about, or is trying to sell you something (or, to be more accurate, has been bought).

So, what is wrong with Cruz’s statement?  Well, assuming that by ‘recorded warming’, he means the satellite-derived lower atmospheric surface temperatures his statement is absolutely correct.  If he is referring to globally averaged surface temperatures since 2000, there is only a very small amount of warming; this small amount of warming is indeed contrary to the theory of AGW.

Without going into details here, I refer you to my previous post and my invited presentation given at the American Physical Society:  Causes and Implications of the Pause.

Bottom line:  There is nothing irrational or particularly incorrect about Senator Cruz’s statement.  Phil Plait (Bad Astronomer) who wrote the Slate piece made more incorrect statements than did Cruz.

I just spotted this article from Science2.0 re Cruz and NASA, worth reading [link]

January 16, 2015 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

2014: year of futility in the fight against climate change

By Steve Goreham | Communities Digital News | December 29, 2014

The year 2014 was another year of futility in the fight against climate change. Climatists redoubled efforts to convince citizens that urgent action is needed to stop dangerous global warming. But the gap between public warnings and actual events produced an endless stream of climate irony.

January began with a frosty bang as an arctic air mass descended on the central United States, following a similar event in December. What was once called a cold snap is now ominously christened a “polar vortex.” Record-low daily temperatures were recorded from Minnesota to Boston, along with all-time seasonal snowfalls in many cities.

In a White House video released on January 8, John Holdren, chief science advisor to President Obama, made the paradoxical statement, “But a growing body of evidence suggests that the kind of extreme cold being experienced by much of the United States as we speak is a pattern that we can expect to see with increasing frequency as global warming continues.”

Also in January, passengers of the research ship Akademik Shokalskiy were rescued after the ship was locked in ice for 10 days near the antarctic coast. The expedition lead by professor Chris Turney had intended to study how weather patterns near Antarctica were changing due to man-made global warming.

On February 16, during a presentation in Indonesia, Secretary of State John Kerry stated that climate change was “perhaps the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.” Only two days later, protestors set fire to Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, leading to the resignation of President Viktor Yanukovych. In March, Russia seized the Crimea. In July, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine, and political unrest continues today. In the Middle East, slaughter of innocent civilians and beheading of western captives became a growing trend. Man-made climate casualties seem remarkably scarce in comparison.

In March, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations released Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, part of its Fifth Assessment Report. The report said that man-made climate change would reduce world agricultural output. Lead author Dr. Mark Howden stated, “There’s increasing evidence that climate change is also impacting on agriculture, particularly on some of the cereal crops such as wheat and maize. The negative impacts are greater and quicker than we previously thought.”

Meanwhile, farmers continued to ignore the warnings of the IPCC. According to the US Department of Agriculture, world agricultural production set all-time records for all three major cereal crops in 2014, with rice output up 1.1 percent, wheat up 11.2 percent, and corn up a whopping 14.0 percent over 2013.

The Obama administration continued its attack on coal-fired power plants, which provide about 40 percent of US electricity. In June, the EPA proposed new restrictions on carbon emissions that would make it virtually impossible to build a new coal-fired plant in the US. At the same time, more than 1,200 new coal-fired plants are planned across the world, with two-thirds to be built in India and China.

In his 2007 Noble Prize acceptance speech, former Vice President Al Gore warned that the arctic ice could be gone in “as little as seven years.” But arctic sea ice rebounded in 2014 and antarctic sea ice has been growing for decades. According to the University of Illinois, satellites measured global sea ice area at above the 30-year average at the end of 2014.

In September, the United Nations held a climate summit in New York City to urge the world to conserve energy and reduce emissions. Spokesman Leonardo DiCaprio stated, “This disaster has grown beyond the choices that individuals make.” Mr. DiCaprio neglected to mention his frequent flights on carbon-emitting private jets or his ownership of the world’s fifth largest yacht, purchased from a Middle East oil tycoon.

In October, climate skeptics reported the eighteenth straight year of flat global temperatures. Satellite data shows no temperature increase since 1997. The “pause” in global warming is now old enough to vote or to serve in the military.

Hurricanes and tornadoes are favored events for generating alarming climate headlines, but US weather events were few in 2014. US tornadic activity was below average and the lack of strong hurricanes continued. No Category 3 or stronger hurricane has made US landfall for more than eight years, the longest period since records began in 1900.

The last half of 2014 witnessed a steep drop in world petroleum prices from over $100 per barrel to under $60 per barrel. Hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, technologies perfected by US geologists and petroleum engineers over the last two decades, produced an explosion in US oil production and triggered the fall in world prices.

But the concurrent drop in US gasoline prices to two dollars per gallon is not welcomed by man-made global warming believers. Former Energy Secretary Stephen Chu said in 2008, “So we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” English journalist George Monbiot has lamented, “We were wrong about peak oil: there’s enough in the ground to deep-fry the planet.”

With all the climate fun in 2014, what will 2015 hold?

Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism:  Mankind and Climate Change Mania.Chi

December 30, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

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