The Active Sun?

Before I get on to the subject, it's been a little over three months since I've posted here. Been busy.

Anyway, much has happened since 30 October 2009. In the middle of November, "Climategate" burst onto the scene even in the midst of alarmist ramp up to Copenhagen. While the media in the UK eventually caught on and are now in full cry, the media in the US, ever careful to protect their creation "The Obamasiah" from potential harm, ignore the story. Or rather stories that have popped up fast and furious since the beginning of "Climategate."

Let's see. We started with "Climategate" which led into the Copehagen failure. This was followed by "Glaciergate", "Amazongate", "Disastergate", "Greenpeacegate", "World Wildlife Fund Gate", "Climbing Gate", and “New York Times Gate", just to name the headliners. Of couse most of the IPCC related "gates" could be lumped under "non-peer reviewed-violation-of-their-own-rules-gate."

It's been a bad three months for Warmistas. Their case is crumbling, but the US media ignores the story. Why? Because the Obamasiah and his cabal are still pushing their green fantasies and economy-destroying CO2 limiting agenda. So we can't possibly offer any counter-testimony that might make "The One" look bad, can we? So in the US the nonsense alarmist stories continue.

The other day I was told by someone I work with that the sun was really ramping up. That's what he heard on "National Socialist Radio" (NPR) or some such. Ok, but here's what's really amusing. While the sun was truly active, the Warmistas claimed that it didn't matter. Then the sun went quiet and strange things started happening. You could just hear them every time the Solar Flux started climbing again, cheering. You see, they really knew better all along.

In January the Solar Flux hit its high point of the current cycle at 94, but then quickly dropped back down to around 74. And yet, with the Solar Flux in the low 70s and hardly any sun spots...still...the news story was about the sun ramping up.

Well, here's the sun just a few days ago from NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory:



Compare that to October 2003:



Or to March 2001:



Seems to me that some people are really stretching to find a "warming" story.

More Pre-Copenhagen Nonsense

The pre-Copenhagen hysteria and junk-science continues. If you repeat a mantra often enough, it must be true even in the face of contrary and mounting evidence that the mantra is false. That’s how propaganda works. As socialist propaganda meisters know, the bigger the lie, the more believable the lie.

First up, we have the UK’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown stating that we have only 50 days to save the world! What? Really? Have we actually proven with evidence, not computer models, that:
a. The recent warming is “unnatural and unprecedented”?
b. That the recent warming is caused by human produced CO₂?
c. That destroying the Western economies will actually “save the planet”?

PULEESE! Count me out!

Speaking of count me out, have you seen the “Count Me In” campaign at the UK Science Museum’s web site intended to tell the UK politicians that the “people” want them to destroy the UK’s economy in order to save the world? Well, it’s backfired. Then even after resetting the count and implementing a better procedure to weed out “duplicates” and prevent the alleged “hijacking by skeptics” the count is still going the wrong way…for “Warmistas” that is. As of about 07:45 GMT today (30 October 2009), the count stands at 5675 “Count Me Out” to only 826 “Count Me In.” Hmm, something like 7 to 1?

Seems folks don’t want their government to sell them down the river. Imagine that! Not that the idiot politicians in the UK will listen to their people any better than our own “legal thieves” in the USA listen to their people.

Speaking of idiot politicians and legal thievery, have you seen the Goracle’s new book? He’s got an official announcement on his junk science web site. Goracle’s got a thing about hurricanes too, even though that prediction fell totally flat this year and there’s no actual evidence to back his claims.

If you look at the cover you see it’s a Photoshop attempt to terrorize the masses…and not a very good one at that. At least the Arctic is still there. I guess he forgot to tell the graphic artist that the Arctic is supposed to be gone by the summer of 2013. The hurricane doesn’t even follow the curvature of the earth! You'd think a guy worth over $100 million could affort better graphic artists.

Anthony Watts over at WUWT has a great piece on it, including the real science about the cyclone energy over the last few years.

That's just a handful of the lunacy since the last post. There's much more out there. Come on folks! Demand facts, not computer models!

Alarmist Ramp-up to Copenhagen

In the ramp up for the Alarmist confab at Copenhagen, AKA the UN Climate Conference, the media is firing out almost daily propaganda in their attempt to sway flagging public opinion. The alarmist claptrap is reaching hysterical proportions. “We’re all gonna die!” This is getting a bit old. Here’s some of the latest nonsense, primarily from the AP, which has totally bought into the AGW fraud.

Starting with this 17 September article: “Arctic Woes: Dead Walruses, Low Sea Ice” the drumbeat continues. Problem was it was the only picture they could produce of “hundreds” of walruses and the ones they pictured looked a tad shot. This story sorta dropped off the radar screen waiting for the US Fish and Wildlife Services guys to get on the scene to evaluate the situation. There was additional speculation that poachers were to blame, but without an “on the ground” look everything, including the AGW Alarmist interpretation is pure speculation. The USGS walrus expert credited with the picture never returned emails seeking additional information. Even Joe Romm pulled this story and picture from Climate Progress after a couple days.

The very next day the oceans were boiling: “World’s Oceans Warmest on Record” except that the NOAA deliberately omitted all data sources that contradicted the Alarmist “script.” Let’s also ignore the fact that “on record” means less than 50 years in this case and what we have involves lots of data in-filling.

Three days later we get the very good news that states can sue utility companies for providing electricity to their citizens under the guise of “punishing” them for causing global warming: “Court: States May Sue Utilities over Warming”. Somehow the loonies in California, Wisconsin, Vermont, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York City think they can get more revenue this way and that it won’t in any way affect electricity rates. What do all these states have in common? Loony Lefties in charge.

On the same day we get the sad news that: “Polar Bear Hunters See Culture Melt Away”. Ok, now let’s get this straight. Environmentalists are now sad that evil polar bear hunters can’t kill more polar bears because they’re all drowning out there on the melting ice. Say what? Let’s overlook the five-fold increase in polar bears in the last 50 years. Let’s over look the fact that the reason the polar bear numbers recovered was a world-wide ban on hunting them. Oh and that’s why the polar bear hunters can’t hunt the bears, hunting is severely limited by law.

On 23 September we find out that Greenland is melting…again! “Warming Seas, Greenland Melt Studied”. Of course they can’t actually prove this. There aren’t really any consistent measurements, but the models say so. We also need to conveniently forget that the Vikings grew wheat and flax in Greenland a thousand years ago when it was much warmer and there was less ice. We still can’t grow wheat or flax in Greenland because current soil temperatures are so low that they don’t allow for germination. Tell me again why a warmer Greenland is bad?

Finally, on 24 September the all wise and powerful UN tells us we’re all gonna die…again: “UN: Expect Big Jump in Temperatures”. They never seem to tire of their broken computer models, do they? Despite all actual evidence to the contrary, the models say it’s getting hot. Therefore the UN political wonks tell us we’re all gonna die and nothing we can do will stop it. If that’s the case, why are we planning on wasting, time and money? Why are we trying to destroy in industrialized world and hold back countries trying improve the lot of their people if we can’t stop climate change anyway?

These are just a handful of the increasingly shrill Alarmist stories in the last few weeks with many more coming as those deepest involved in the “Climate Change” fraud fight for economy-destroying CO₂ agreements at Copenhagen in December.

It's the Thermometers, Stupid!

I’ve been following the work of E.M. Smith looking at how the Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) calculates their “global” temperature anomaly, which is oft quoted by alarmists everywhere as “evidence” of global warming. Up to now, E.M. Smith has concentrated on the interesting things GISS does with their ramshackle code. Recently he’s taken a step back in one of those “wait a minute” moments one gets when something strange simply pops out. He took a look at the data.

One of the things that popped out for him was that virtually all the warming signal of the past 30+ years occurs in the winter months. The summer months don’t show any significant warming signal. We wonder why this is so. Should not the "unprecedented and dramatic" rise in temperatures caused by the trace gas CO₂ occur across all seasons, if indeed CO₂ is the culprit? Could it be that more thermometers have moved to the tropics? Would not a change in where we are measuring temperatures have an impact on the average?

At first E.M. was going to put off delving deeper, but ultimately curiosity overcame him. Guess what he found? There was an increase in thermometers in the tropics and a decrease in the northern latitudes during the entire “Modern Warming Period.” Gee, what could that do to our global temperature average? Could it possibly be that if we measure more temperatures in warm places and fewer in colder places that the average will go up? It’s the thermometers, stupid!

So, quite apart from lack of evidence for the anthropogenic cause of global warming, we now can demonstrate, with the data, significant doubt that there is significant warming at all. So far no one has discovered any methodology in GISSTemp that accounts for Tropic Heat Island (THI) effect. Not that their method for Urban Heat Island (UHI) is very good either.

Read the details of E.M. Smith's discovery here.

Arguing with the "Dark Side"

When I’m able to get around to various Skeptic blogs to argue with the visiting AGW proponents, I notice some interesting things.

First, there is a tendency among the AGW crowd to argue from authority. This is step one. They almost always fall back on the “peer-review” argument to discredit studies contrary to their world view. Incapable of understanding the studies, or too intellectually lazy to actually read the studies, they use this tactic to divert the arguments. Not that a particular CAGW study is factually wrong, but that it may not have been “peer-reviewed” or “peer-reviewed” by the right referees is the crux of their argument. A study is valid or invalid on its merits, not whether or not it appeared in specific journal.

I've even come across those who say they only read “reports in peer-reviewed journals.” How intellectually lazy can you get? Just flat refuse to check out a study and judge it on its merits. Couldn't be simpler. And they call us "deniers?" It seems to me that in reality these people don't understand the studies unless they are explained for them in the slick magazines.

They completely ignore the fact that two of the “premier” science magazines “Nature” and “Science” simply refuse to publish anything that is counter to the AGW position, no matter what the credentials of the researcher. I suspect that this is deliberate editorial policy at these two journals, which effectively stacks the deck for the AGW proponents in their argument.

Second, there is the tendency toward condescension. “If you bothered to read XYZ, you’d know blah…blah…” What I often find is that these people haven’t read more than the abstract of the study they are referencing, or possibly the “Nature” or “Science” article, but not the actual complete study. Normally when I start citing specific paragraphs from the studies, they move on to new red herrings.

Third, about the red herrings – they are a favorite AGW proponent argumentative technique for getting Skeptics “off-topic” and into irrelevant discussion. Typically these are delivered “barrage style” so that if you miss answering one, they beat you over the head with it in their smug condescending way. Attempting to answer them becomes more and more complicated and difficult requiring longer and longer posts. I’ve fallen into the trap myself on occasion. It’s best to take your time in the first place, identify the red herrings as such and refuse to discuss them.

Fourth, they display a heavy reliance on ad hominem attacks. Typical attacks include: shill for big oil, shill for coal companies, Denier, Flat Earther…and those are the polite ones. This is especially true if you visit their haunts, “Real Climate,” “Open Mind,” and “Climate Progress” just to name a few. A Skeptic visiting these sites will almost always be subjected to a vicious round of name-calling and hostility that the alleged “moderators” gleefully allow and participate in. The moderators of these sites will happily edit your comments in order to twist your words, delete your comments if they can’t handle them, or flat block you from the site.

Finally, there is the simple fact that they never actually produce any empirical evidence to support their AGW hypothesis. They will throw study after study at you, based upon waves of assumptions supported by model after model and never understand that they are not producing empirical evidence. Closely tied to this is that they rarely understand the difference between causation and correlation.

Their reasoning goes: CO₂ has gone up and temperature has gone up, ergo man-made CO₂ has caused global warming. They may be able to show correlation, but causality is a different matter.

Basically their argument takes a complex, somewhat chaotic climate system that is full of uncertainty and reduces it to correlation between a trace atmospheric gas and temperature. They state it in terms of absolute certainty, where none exists. Their “consensus” argument is the indispensible bedrock of their belief system and that is why they work so hard to discredit Skeptics rather than actually providing evidence to support their hypothesis.

Some Thoughts on Uban Heat Island (UHI) Effects

Urban Heat Island effect (UHI) is the concept that temperature measurements in urban areas will be biased upwards due to manmade structures holding and reflecting heat. Daytime temperatures are elevated, but it is the impact on nighttime temperatures that wipes out any averaging value that may accrue otherwise. Nighttime urban temperatures tend to be significantly higher than nighttime rural temperatures because the manmade structures like roads, buildings and artificial heat sources continue to emit latent heat that was stored up during daylight.

Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Hadley Climate Research Unit (HADCRU) are the three main reporting agencies that calculate a global surface temperature anomaly. All three agencies rely heavily on land-based surface station temperature records to calculate the anomaly and this is where the dispute about UHI comes into play. There are other arguments against using surface station temperatures as a measure of atmospheric change, but in this post I’ll concentrate on UHI.

This is not a trivial discussion since the Anthropogenic Climate Change Theory Advocates (ACCTAs) also known as Anthropogenic Global Warming Alarmists (AGWAs) tend to use these anomalies as their main “evidence” of AGW. It is these alarming projections and hysterics that are driving politicians into “doing something” even if it further cripples the economy.

All three of the reporting agencies named above make an attempt at accounting for UHI. In this post I’ll point out the general methodology of how GISS does this with their GISSTemp anomaly.

The overall “Readme File” that comes with GISSTemp is somewhat lacking, but here is the documentation about the UHI methodology:

“The goal of the homogeneization effort is to avoid any impact (warming or cooling) of the changing environment that some stations experienced by changing the long term trend of any non-rural station to match the long term trend of their rural neighbors, while retaining the short term monthly and annual variations. If no such neighbors exist, the station is completely dropped, if the rural records are shorter, part of the non-rural record is dropped.”

Set aside the misspelling of “homogenization.” Remember, they’re computer geeks so cut them a little slack. I haven’t yet gone into that section of the code to see exactly how they determine a “rural neighbor,” but at this point it isn’t necessary. All you need know is that if the rural neighbors are “contaminated” by their own UHI issues, then the anomaly for the urban station will be overstated in addition to the anomaly being overstated for the rural neighbor. Add that up a few thousand times and think about what it does to the data.

Given the poor quality control on US surface stations, as documented by Anthony Watts in his spring Surface Stations Report, we should immediately begin to question the resulting anomalies. If the surface stations in one of the most advanced countries on earth demonstrate such bias, what confidence can we have in the accuracy of stations located in less-developed countries? How can we trust an anomaly that results from bad data that isn’t validated despite the best efforts of analysts trying to “clean it up?” You can’t.

This isn’t due to deliberate malfeasance or conspiracy, but to the fact that there simply aren’t the proper controls in place to ensure accurate data. No matter how hard they try to statistically adjust the numbers, no matter their diligence in eliminating obvious outliers, there is no getting around the fact that thousands of surface stations are providing upwardly biased measurements.

I don’t think the agencies are deliberately “fudging” the numbers upward. I think they truly believe that they are adequately correcting for the bias. On the other hand, I think they are ignoring the highly suspect nature of the measurements collected by the surface stations and don’t have a proper understanding of just how bad the data is.

A Quiet Sun

Last week (5 May 2009), just over the solar horizon, we were treated to a big CME (coronal mass ejection). Two more big eruptions followed on 6 May. The AGW crowd were all atwitter. The sun was waking up and they could now breathe easy. That mean sun was not going to falsify their beloved hypothesis.

Picture taken by the UV telescope on NASA's STEREO-B satellite.

The world waited for the sun to rotate the great big sunspots into view. The days passed, the sun rotated and there into view for the first time in months, NOTHING! Ooops. The sun is not following the model predictions.

Days later we have a couple of sunspecks, hardly worthy of being called spots, but at least technically they are sunspots. Yet, nothing else. The sun remains quiet.

To make matters worse, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Solar Weather Prediction Center glumly adjusted and announced their forecast for Solar Cycle 24. It’s gonna be a quiet one, maybe also a long one like Solar Cycle 23. Their projections for Solar Cycle 25 are for a continuing quiet sun.

The sunspecks are visible in the upper left quadrant.

So far, measurements indicate a Maunder-type minimum (that period between 1645 and 1715 when the sun was very quiet and temperatures plummeted), which would be very bad not only for the AGW crowd’s pet hypothesis and Al Gore’s bank account, but also for mankind. Things could get a lot colder in a hurry. I’m not saying Ice Age, but a lot colder than we’ve seen in a very long time. Crops will fail and people will starve and freeze. Are we ready for that?