The Emotional Buttons for AGW Alarmists continue to fail...

As science continues to disassemble the case supporting anthropogenic global warming, I've been watching two of their predicted vehicles of catastrophe: sea ice extent and sea level rise.

Theoretically, according to the AGW alarmists, global warming is melting the Arctic sea ice faster and faster causing unnatural stresses on polar bear populations. You remember the heart tugging images of stranded polar bears, don't you? Al Gore uses them to great effect (emotional effect).



Well, maybe not. 2009 appears to have been a lean year, but, not a record.

In light of this, the UK Met. Office has moderated their prediction of an ice free Arctic by 2020. Their new uncertain target is 2060 to 2080. See their press release.

And, as that is happening, the melt rates for all the world's glaciers are speeding up. Right? That is causing the rate of sea level rise to increase. Right? Well, maybe not. As of Sept. 18, 2009, the University of Colorado (home of our National Sea Ice Data Center) sea level data looks like this.

.

Looking at that graph, it appears that the trend is bending down recently, not up. While this is a short period of down turn, or slowing sea level rise, it makes the alarmist predictions of the AGWers a little harder to swallow. Even more, it appears to be nearly flat since 2006. All the while CO2 concentrations have climbed.

Note also, that the units are millimeters.


Remember, also, that the AGW alarmists' claim is that this stuff is happening so fast that it can not all be natural. They assert that there must be a significant man made contribution. Since these less-than-catastrophic rates of change are substantially slower than their predictions, it begs the question, is all or very nearly all of this natural? Have they grossly over estimated or over stated the possible human contribution? It appears they have.

The Mirage of Anthropogenic Global Warming is Clearing

A decade or so back, some scientists published papers that asserted that the globe was getting warmer. The United Nations empaneled their Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. An alleged consensus of scientists warned of impending doom as we burned fossil fuels emitting CO2 which accelerated the green house effect and threatened to end Nature as we know it thereby, threatening mankind.

In the past week, events have unfolded that may completely uproot the science that claims that we're warming faster than nature would cause.

In its Third Assessment Report (2000), the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), included a hockey stick shaped picture of global temperatures that turned previous climate surveys on their heads. Those previous surveys showed things like a medieval warm period and a little ice age in relatively recent centuries. The hockey stick graph, produced by Michael Mann of the Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts, showed no such variability in past climate and then shows an astonishing/scary upswing in temperatures. This graph used tree ring analysis as a major/primary proxy for temperature. Mann used data originally assembled by Briffa. The top half of the image below depicts thermometer measurements over the period. There are real problems with those data like failure to accommodate the urban heat island effect and mathematical averaging of distant sites and such, but, that will have to wait for another post. The bottom half of this image is the UN hockey stick graph.


Straight from the UN IPCC Web Site: http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/images/figspm-1.gif

When this report came out, it was not uncommon to read about the magical disappearance of the medieval warm period and little ice age. But, this new stuff was high quality peer-reviewed science telling us better. This image became the icon of global warming alarmists and Al Gore gave it center stage in his movie, An Inconvenient Truth. Many other truths of science had turned out to be wrong. So be it.

Well, maybe not. Those who were pretty convinced that numerous other studies had pretty well established significant climate variability began to question Mann's work, the graph itself, and its use in the IPCC report. It was not long before Mr. McIntyre shot a few holes in the hockey stick. One of the questions posed by skeptics was about the data used to create the graph. Numerous requests were made over years for the data so that the work could be replicated. Those requests were denied. For much more than you want to read on the politics of this ordeal, see http://wattsupwiththat.com/ and http://climateaudit.org/.

Finally, after numerous denials and then requests through the UK version of the Freedom of Information Act, the data has been made available.

With data in hand, McIntyre has put a torpedo in the hockey stick graph hull at the water line.

The short version...
There are at least 34 sets of tree ring data taken from trees in the area from which Briffa took his tree ring data (referred to as Yamal in the literature). Briffa used only 12 trees, then 10, then 3. When a scientist looks at a population and picks a small number of individuals to represent that population, he/she needs to have some reasonable rationale for why the others were rejected or, alternatively, how they are sure the few are representative of the others.... and, maybe Mann and Briffa et. al. will have just such an explanation (they have not for years). So, McIntyre and friends put the data through the same process that Mann et. al. did to see if there were any differences between the Briffa/Mann/CRU archive data (population of 12) and the wider population. As it turns out, the difference is dramatic. They ended up with the same shape curve Mann did with the Briffa/Mann data. But, the wider population painted a different picture.



The red line is the Briffa/Mann/CRU data set showing a dramatic increase in temperatures in recent years. The black line is the wider population, sans the Briffa trees, from the same area showing no real change in temperatures. The green line is all the data. Unless and until Mann et. al. and CRU can provide an explanation for the exclusion of vast majority of the data which shows no significant warming, the hockey stick graph and the anthropogenic global warming alarm-ism based on it and its underlying data are invalid.


Al Gore, your office is calling..... or, at least, it should be.

Again with the Sun! What's an AGW Alarmist to do?

From Anthony Watts wonderful site, we get a report that scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) have found that solar output does not necessarily track with the 11 year sun spot cycle. Rather, as the sun spot cycle has reached a recent minimum, solar output has continued to be relatively strong.

So, what? Well, the problem is that AGW alarmist tell us that they've accounted for all the natural drivers for climate change and still can't find in those natural drivers enough 'drive' to cause the recent warming (which has actually recently turned into cooling since 1998 - but, that's another topic). Therefore, since we can't find enough natural drivers to cause the recent warming, non-natural or MAN-MADE drivers must be to blame. Ergo, the idea of Anthropogenic Global Warming.

This hubris of scientific thought can be astonishing. AGW Alarmist assure us that they really really do have it pretty well figured out. They continue to stiff-arm the idea that the Sun actually plays an enormous and highly dynamic role in Earth's climate. Yet, every time some one does a little more science on the Sun and things like cosmic radiation, we find new and surprising dynamics. Dynamics such as the one identified by NCAR that shows the Sun actually sending a lot of energy our way, just when we thought it wasn't.

It is entirely possible that human beings are doing things to effect our climate. And, there are plenty of valid reasons to take good care of our planet. But, in the face of the enormous nuclear reaction that lights and warms our planet, it would seem that our relative contribution to warming is rather minuscule.

The more we learn, the less room there is in the global climate models for any significant human contribution to climate change in either direction.

P.S. - To Anthony Watts and all his contributors, thank you helping me stay sane. .... or, at least, as sane as I can. ;-)

A good laymen's presentation on the AGW crisis (not)

Apparently, John Stossel is joining Fox News. I never quite understood how he got away with some of the non-liberal-boilerplate pieces that he did on 20/20 for ABC. This 8 minute video of his is slightly dated, but, it does a good job of dispelling some of the myths put out by the anthropogenic global warming crowd. The facts he states are clear. The scientists he presents are truly well qualified and accomplished scientists in very relevant fields.



Good Job, Mr. Stossel.

Let's Not Throw the Health Care Baby out with the Bathwater

While we are bombarded with the incessant message that health care MUST be taken over by the government, let's not forget that a lot of our system works very well. Maybe we need to make some tweaks, but, let's not throw out all that is good in the name of ill-conceived egalitarianism via government.

http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/49525427.html

Here’s a Second Opinion

By Scott W. Atlas

Ten reasons why America’s health care system is in better condition than you might suppose.


Medical care in the United States is derided as miserable compared to health care systems in the rest of the developed world. Economists, government officials, insurers, and academics beat the drum for a far larger government role in health care. Much of the public assumes that their arguments are sound because the calls for change are so ubiquitous and the topic so complex. Before we turn to government as the solution, however, we should consider some unheralded facts about America’s health care system.

...

Mr. Atlas continues to list 10 very relevant and significant items.

Liberal's True Intent for Health Care Slips Out

If you don't think the liberals intend to end up with a single payer health care system (socialized), then listen to Barney Frank say it out loud in plain english.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3BS4C9e198

YIKES!!!

Constitutions and Treason

I think our current administration has a flawed approach to foreign policy. The much vaunted Obama charisma was to mollify the angry foreign streets and comfort those threatened by US imperialism. Despots and tyrants would put aside their petty desires and jealousies for the greater good. Iran and North Korea would see the wisdom of Obama's preaching and sit in earnest discussion to further world peace. Well, ... maybe not.

I had a life changing trip to Honduras after hurricane Mitch to install 8 newly developed portable water treatment units. The main killer associated with natural disasters is not usually the disaster, it is the water-borne illness that follows weeks and months later. The small privately owned environmental engineering company I worked for had personal relationships with the Episcopal Church in Honduras. Immediately after the storm, when the owner of the company asked the Episcopal Bishop what he (Honduras) needed, that answer was water. After a quick survey of available water treatment units, it was clear that none were large enough to be of use and, at the same time, portable enough to move across a country with no roads. We needed something that would produce a lot of water and that would fit on a single 4 wheel drive pickup. Our owner pulled about 20 of us with related experience into the back parking lot and in two days we had a working proto-type. A week or so later, we had built the first 8 units, tested them, and broke them down for shipment. That effort turned into Water Missions International. If you want to give money to an organization that puts that money to very good use, write them a check.

All that said because I fell in love with Honduras and the people there. Even in their absolutely destitute poverty, they were warm and generous. Now, our Gov't betrays them and I take it personally.

It has been difficult to tell in our popular press exactly what has been happening there. I was puzzled when I heard that our government was siding with Zelaya, the ousted president, because it sounded like Zelaya was violating the Honduran constitution and that the actions of the legislature, courts, and military had been entirely legal. But, obviously, I thought, surely our State Department would not side with one who wanted to uproot the national constitution of Honduras against the legitimate Honduran government. Surely, there must be more to the story.

Well I still don't understand. Today, I finally found a clear legal presentation of the situation written by Miguel Estrada, a Honduran immigrant to the US and a lawyer. There can be no doubt that the removal of Zelaya was legal and appropriate. The documents substantiating the actions are posted on the Honduran Supreme Court's web site.

It is clear that Zelaya tried to uproot the Honduran constitution, violated explicit portions of that document, and committed acts that were/are explicitly listed as treasonous in their constitution. His removal from office was entirely legal and appropriate.

So, I am left wondering why our current administration supports Zelaya and is tightening the pressure on the legal and right govermnent of Honduras to reinstate him.

I can only come up with one idea and I hope it is horribly wrong. The only reason I can see for the Obama administration to support Zelaya and reject the legitimate government of Honduras is because Obama (and, maybe those around him) relates to our constitution in exactly the same way Zelaya related to his. Maybe they see our founding document as an impediment to their ends. I really hope that is not the case. I really hope that there are other, less objectionable, reasons for our government supporting a treasonous deposed president in opposition to a legitimate and right and functioning Honduran gov't.

Any ideas? I'm open and hoping to have that idea replaced with a more palatable one.