IPCC models getting mushy

In the next five years, the global warming paradigm may fall apart if the models prove worthless

There has been a lot of talk lately about the upcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, and whether it will take into account the lack of warming since the 1990s. Everything you need to know about the dilemma the IPCC faces is summed up in one remarkable graph.

figure nearby is from the draft version that underwent expert review last winter. It compares climate model simulations of the global average temperature to observations over the post-1990 interval. During this time atmospheric carbon dioxide rose by 12%, from 355 parts per million (ppm) to 396 ppm. The IPCC graph shows that climate models predicted temperatures should have responded by rising somewhere between about 0.2 and 0.9 degrees C over the same period. But the actual temperature change was only about 0.1 degrees, and was within the margin of error around zero. In other words, models significantly over-predicted the warming effect of CO2 emissions for the past 22 years.

READ MORE:  http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/09/16/ipcc-models-getting-mushy/

Dialing Back the Alarm on Climate Change

A forthcoming report lowers estimates on global warming

Later this month, a long-awaited event that last happened in 2007 will recur. Like a returning comet, it will be taken to portend ominous happenings. I refer to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) "fifth assessment report," part of which will be published on Sept. 27.

There have already been leaks from this 31-page document, which summarizes 1,914 pages of scientific discussion, but thanks to a senior climate scientist, I have had a glimpse of the key prediction at the heart of the document. The big news is that, for the first time since these reports started coming out in 1990, the new one dials back the alarm. It states that the temperature rise we can expect as a result of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide is lower than the IPCC thought in 2007.

READ MORE:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324549004579067532485712464.html

Dialing Back the Alarm on Climate Change

A forthcoming report lowers estimates on global warming

Later this month, a long-awaited event that last happened in 2007 will recur. Like a returning comet, it will be taken to portend ominous happenings. I refer to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) "fifth assessment report," part of which will be published on Sept. 27.

There have already been leaks from this 31-page document, which summarizes 1,914 pages of scientific discussion, but thanks to a senior climate scientist, I have had a glimpse of the key prediction at the heart of the document. The big news is that, for the first time since these reports started coming out in 1990, the new one dials back the alarm. It states that the temperature rise we can expect as a result of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide is lower than the IPCC thought in 2007.

READ MORE:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324549004579067532485712464.html

Dialing Back the Alarm on Climate Change

A forthcoming report lowers estimates on global warming

Later this month, a long-awaited event that last happened in 2007 will recur. Like a returning comet, it will be taken to portend ominous happenings. I refer to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) "fifth assessment report," part of which will be published on Sept. 27.

There have already been leaks from this 31-page document, which summarizes 1,914 pages of scientific discussion, but thanks to a senior climate scientist, I have had a glimpse of the key prediction at the heart of the document. The big news is that, for the first time since these reports started coming out in 1990, the new one dials back the alarm. It states that the temperature rise we can expect as a result of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide is lower than the IPCC thought in 2007.

READ MORE:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324549004579067532485712464.html

Dialing Back the Alarm on Climate Change

A forthcoming report lowers estimates on global warming

Later this month, a long-awaited event that last happened in 2007 will recur. Like a returning comet, it will be taken to portend ominous happenings. I refer to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) "fifth assessment report," part of which will be published on Sept. 27.

There have already been leaks from this 31-page document, which summarizes 1,914 pages of scientific discussion, but thanks to a senior climate scientist, I have had a glimpse of the key prediction at the heart of the document. The big news is that, for the first time since these reports started coming out in 1990, the new one dials back the alarm. It states that the temperature rise we can expect as a result of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide is lower than the IPCC thought in 2007.

READ MORE:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324549004579067532485712464.html

Dialing Back the Alarm on Climate Change

A forthcoming report lowers estimates on global warming

Later this month, a long-awaited event that last happened in 2007 will recur. Like a returning comet, it will be taken to portend ominous happenings. I refer to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) "fifth assessment report," part of which will be published on Sept. 27.

There have already been leaks from this 31-page document, which summarizes 1,914 pages of scientific discussion, but thanks to a senior climate scientist, I have had a glimpse of the key prediction at the heart of the document. The big news is that, for the first time since these reports started coming out in 1990, the new one dials back the alarm. It states that the temperature rise we can expect as a result of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide is lower than the IPCC thought in 2007.

READ MORE:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324549004579067532485712464.html

Dialing Back the Alarm on Climate Change

A forthcoming report lowers estimates on global warming

Later this month, a long-awaited event that last happened in 2007 will recur. Like a returning comet, it will be taken to portend ominous happenings. I refer to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) "fifth assessment report," part of which will be published on Sept. 27.

There have already been leaks from this 31-page document, which summarizes 1,914 pages of scientific discussion, but thanks to a senior climate scientist, I have had a glimpse of the key prediction at the heart of the document. The big news is that, for the first time since these reports started coming out in 1990, the new one dials back the alarm. It states that the temperature rise we can expect as a result of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide is lower than the IPCC thought in 2007.

READ MORE:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324549004579067532485712464.html

An Environmentalist Deception

If the government buys the forest, should the citizens make a sound?

Last week the R Street Institute, which claims to advocate free market policies, issued a statement celebrating the anniversary of the establishment of Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument in 1982. This is, at best, misguided. The federal government’s ever-growing control over and continuous acquisition of land across America is the antithesis of the institution of private property and undermines conscientious private stewardship of land, waters, and other natural resources. 

Every day, we see the results of a century of mismanagement of government-owned forests. Failure to harvest timber allows the forests to become overgrown and filled with overstressed, diseased, beetle-ridden, dying, and dead trees—leading to millions of acres scorched by catastrophic wildfires every summer, year after year.

READ MORE:  http://spectator.org/archives/2013/09/04/an-environmentalist-deception

EU report: Brussels biofuels policy hikes food prices by up to 50%

If biofuels received no EU policy support, the price of food stuffs such as vegetable oil would be 50% lower in Europe by 2020 than at present – and 15% lower elsewhere in the world – according to new research by the EU’s Joint Research Centre (JRC).

The “significantly lower” results are because global prices for vegetable oils – which are 60% palm and soy oil – are “strongly driven” by their use as food, says the paper by the JRC, the EU's official scientific and technical research laboratory.

When more soy and palm oil are used for biofuels production, less is available for food use and the resulting scarcity drives food price inflation.

“Given that more than half of the vegetable oils are used for biodiesel production in the base (business as usual scenario) in 2020, any decrease in biodiesel production strongly affects the vegetable oil market,” the JRC study says.

READ MORE:  http://www.euractiv.com/energy/eu-report-brussels-biofuels-poli-news-530293

Obama blaming Canada for Keystone delay is just more fence-sitting

At the latest, realistic decision point on whether the Keystone XL pipeline gets a United States permit slips toward the spring of 2014, the new excuse bandied about is that the delay is Canada’s fault because it has failed to deliver greenhouse gas regulations for the oil and gas industry.

It’s an excuse that needs to be exposed for what it is: a continuation of the U.S. administration’s leadership by avoidance on a grossly mishandled project.

Indications are that Canada will be well on its way to implementing regulations for oil producers by next spring that will be more stringent than anything Obama has been able to deliver in his own country. The regulations will put Canada’s oil and gas industry at a disadvantage versus U.S. oil producers and all other suppliers of oil to the United States, yet the odds are Obama will still sit on the fence because he will by then be facing mid-term elections in November 2014, when he will need the support of his insatiable green base.

READ MORE:  http://business.financialpost.com/2013/09/05/obama-blaming-canada-for-keystone-delay-is-just-more-fence-sitting/?__lsa=4599-44bb

Global warming? No, actually we're cooling, claim scientists

A cold Arctic summer has led to a record increase in the ice cap, leading experts to predict a period of global cooling. 

There has been a 60 per cent increase in the amount of ocean covered with ice compared to this time last year, the equivalent of almost a million square miles.

In a rebound from 2012's record low, an unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia's northern shores, days before the annual re-freeze is even set to begin.

The Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific has remained blocked by pack-ice all year, forcing some ships to change their routes.

A leaked report to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) seen by the Mail on Sunday, has led some scientists to claim that the world is heading for a period of cooling that will not end until the middle of this century.

READ MORE:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/10294082/Global-warming-No-actually-were-cooling-claim-scientists.html

Atlantic hurricane season - a record-breaking dud?

(Reuters) - The 2013 Atlantic hurricane season, which forecasters had predicted would be more active than normal, has turned out to be something of a dud so far as an unusual calm hangs over the tropics. As the season heads into the historic peak for activity, it may even enter the record books as marking the quietest start to any Atlantic hurricane season in decades.

 

"It certainly looks like pretty much of a forecast bust," said Jeff Masters, a hurricane expert and director of meteorology at the Weather Underground (www.wunderground.com).

"Virtually all the (forecast) groups were calling for above-normal hurricanes and intensive hurricanes and we haven't even had a hurricane at all, with the season half over," he said.

With records going back to 1851, Dennis Feltgen, a spokesman for the U.S. National Hurricane Center, said there had been only 17 years when the first Atlantic hurricane formed after September 4.

READ MORE:  http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/07/us-weather-hurricanes-idUSBRE9860AY20130907

Big Ethanol Hopes You're a Dope

Nearly everything Growth Energy says is misleading, incomplete, or outright false.

  

POLICY ANALYSIS                                   

Growth Energy recently unveiled a national ad campaign to tell “the truth about ethanol” and the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), the federal mandate that requires oil refiners to blend ethanol into gasoline. But as an Institute for Energy Research (IER) fact check reveals, the ethanol lobby has a curious definition of “truth,” as many of their claims are incomplete, misleading, or outright false. IER’s findings include: Growth Energy claims that “ethanol reduces the price of gasoline,” but the opposite is true. Ethanol contains about 33 percent less energy than gasoline, which means ethanol reduces fuel economy. A year ago, regular gasoline cost about 70 cents less than E85 on a miles-per gallon basis, according to AAA. Even with a record harvest driving down corn prices, E85 still costs about 20 cents more than conventional gasoline. Ethanol is not nearly as “good for the environment” as Growth Energy claims. A study in Science finds that corn-based ethanol nearly doubles greenhouse gas emissions over the next three decades and continues to increase emissions for the next 167 years. A Stanford engineer finds that burning some ethanol adds 22 percent more hydrocarbons to the atmosphere than burning conventional gasoline. Growth Energy argues that higher ethanol blends won’t damage automobiles, but this is false. One study finds that 5 million cars could experience engine damage or failure from E15 use. AAA has called for a suspension of E15 sales, citing potential for consumer confusion and voided warranties. Moreover, boating groups oppose gasoline blended with more than 10 percent ethanol because ethanol damages boats and other small engines. The shale revolution, not ethanol as Growth Energy claims, is the driving force behind America’s declining oil imports. U.S. liquid fuels production rose 39 percent from 2005 to 2012, according to EIA. Biofuels accounted for 32 percent of the increase, while petroleum contributed about 68 percent. Growth Energy falsely asserts that “the ethanol industry does not receive federal subsidies.” Though it expired at the end of 2011, the ethanol tax credit was worth $6.5 billion in FY 2011 and $3.6 billion for the three months it was available in FY 2012. That’s more than twice as much as oil and natural gas subsidies were worth over 91 years. In addition, the RFS enriches the ethanol industry with an even more generous handout: guaranteed market share. The RFS hurts Americans by requiring fuels that contain exorbitant amounts of a product that damages engines, reduces fuel economy, and increases greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, the federal government has replaced the ethanol tax credit with an even more attractive subsidy for the ethanol industry: repeat customers and guaranteed demand. It is time for Congress to repeal this harmful federal mandate. To read the full analysis, click here. ###

 

Gold miners near Chicken cry foul over 'heavy-handed' EPA raids

When agents with the Alaska Environmental Crimes Task Force surged out of the wilderness around the remote community of Chicken wearing body armor and jackets emblazoned with POLICE in big, bold letters, local placer miners didn’t quite know what to think.

Did it really take eight armed men and a squad-size display of paramilitary force to check for dirty water? Some of the miners, who run small businesses, say they felt intimidated.

Others wonder if the actions of the agents put everyone at risk. When your family business involves collecting gold far from nowhere, unusual behavior can be taken as a sign someone might be trying to stage a robbery. How is a remote placer miner to know the people in the jackets saying POLICE really are police?

READ MORE:  http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20130903/gold-miners-near-chicken-cry-foul-over-heavy-handed-epa-raids

And now it's global COOLING! Record return of Arctic ice cap as it grows by 60% in a year

• Almost a million more square miles of ocean covered with ice than in 2012
• BBC reported in 2007 global warming would leave Arctic ice-free in summer by 2013
• Publication of UN climate change report suggesting global warming caused by humans pushed back to later this month

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.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2415191/Global-cooling-Arctic-ice-caps-grows-60-global-warming-predictions.html#ixzz2emrlI8lx

Obama's Stealth War on Global Warming

Stymied by Congress, President Obama is staffing his administration with appointees ready to take aggressive action on climate change.

 

As President Obama tries to fight global warming without any backing from a gridlocked Congress, he's using every weapon in his executive arsenal. His Environmental Protection Agency will soon roll out controversial regulations on carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants. He's told every Cabinet agency to look into ways it can use its authority to act on climate change. And now the administration is stocking the executive branch with an army of new appointees who have a history of working aggressively on climate issues and clean energy, often from leadership jobs at environmental advocacy groups.

It's not surprising to see a president name a top nominee—for Cabinet secretary, say—who has led the way on an issue the White House cares about. In his first term, for example, Obama named as his Energy secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel physicist who had devoted his career to fighting climate change. With the executive branch the only avenue for the president to make an impact on climate policy, the Obama administration is filling out the second and third tiers of agencies—influential workhorse positions such as chiefs of staff, assistant secretaries, and heads of regulatory commissions—with appointees just as devoted to the cause, with the expectation that they'll muscle through a climate and clean-energy agenda wherever they can.

READ MORE:  http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/obama-s-stealth-war-on-global-warming-20130829

 

No Atlantic Hurricane by August in First Time in 11 Years

August is about to end without an Atlantic hurricane for the first time since 2002, calling into question predictions of a more active storm season than normal.

Six tropical systems have formed in the Atlantic since the season began June 1 and none of them has grown to hurricane strength with winds of at least 74 miles (120 kilometers) per hour. Accumulated cyclone energy in the Atlantic, a measure of tropical power, is about 30 percent of where it normally would be, said Phil Klotzbach, lead author of Colorado State University’s seasonal hurricane forecasts.

“At this point, I doubt that a super-active hurricane season will happen,” Klotzbach said in an e-mail yesterday.

READ MORE:  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-30/no-atlantic-hurricane-by-august-in-first-time-in-11-years.html

Slowest Start To A Hurricane Season On Record

Obama says that hurricanes are getting worse, based on some research done at the Choom Climatological Institute.
As we approach the end of August, there have been no Atlantic hurricanes. By this date in the year 1886, there had already been seven hurricanes – including three major hurricanes, one of which wiped the city of Indianola, Texas off the map.

Obama’s presidency has also seen the fewest US hurricane landfalls of any president. Three hurricanes have hit the US while he was in office, compared to twenty-six while Grover Cleveland was in office.

READ MORE:  http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/08/24/slowest-start-to-a-hurricane-season-on-record/

And now it's global COOLING! Record return of Arctic ice cap as it grows by 60% in a year

• Almost a million more square miles of ocean covered with ice than in 2012
• BBC reported in 2007 global warming would leave Arctic ice-free in summer by 2013
• Publication of UN climate change report suggesting global warming caused by humans pushed back to later this month

 

 

 

 

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.

The Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific has remained blocked by pack-ice all year. More than 20 yachts that had planned to sail it have been left ice-bound and a cruise ship attempting the route was forced to turn back.

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.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2415191/Global-cooling-Arctic-ice-caps-grows-60-global-warming-predictions.html#ixzz2ePcNIryA
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Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2415191/Global-cooling-Arctic-ice-caps-grows-60-global-warming-predictions.html#ixzz2ePc0OaDn

Delaware opens Pandora’s Box with BloomEnergy black box

In November 2011, Bloomenergy applied for permits to build an energy center in a Delaware protected coastal zone area. The center would employ solid oxide fuel cells powered by natural gas and housed in casings that look like huge boxes—Bloom boxes or “energy servers.”

The application raised alarms among Delaware citizens worried that they were being handed a Pandora’s Box of unwelcome rate hikes and other surprises. Because of my energy, chemistry and thermodynamics expertise, they asked me to review it.

Solid oxide fuel cells have been around for more than fifty years. However, Bloom claims it has improved on their performance, through proprietary breakthroughs in materials science. Perhaps so. But my doubts that its servers are capable of performing at the levels hyped by Bloom grew when the company never provided details about how its mysterious fuel cells actually worked.

READ MORE:  http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/48833

2899 Record cold temps vs 667 record warm temps in U.S. — From July 24 to August 19

By: Marc Morano - Climate DepotAugust 21, 2013 6:04 PM

2899 Record cold temps vs 667 record warm temps

Via: http://iceagenow.info/2013/08/2899-record-cold-temps-667-record-warm-temps/

From July 24 to August 19

This is global warming?
http://wx.hamweather.com/maps/climate/records/4week/us.html?cat=maxtemp,mintemp,snow,lowma x,highmin,
Thanks to Ralph Fato for this link

National science standards considered for Delaware teachers

As Delaware teachers bring their reading and math teaching in line with national standards, Delaware is headed toward adopting a similar program for science courses.

But the standards could again raise debate over teaching evolution and climate change in schools, and some parents are worried they could be losing control over what their kids are learning.


The Next Generation Science Standards are designed to make science classes more rigorous and to bridge a sometimes wide dividein what is taught in different states, proponents say.


“These are standards that are going to make your child competitive in a global society,” said Tonyea Mead, science associate at the Department of Education.

READ MORE:  http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20130805/NEWS/308050045/National-science-standards-considered-Delaware-teachers?nclick_check=1

UN Announces That 0.00C Warming Since The Year 2000 Is Unprecedented

The planet has warmed faster since the turn of the century than ever recorded, almost doubling the pace of sea-level increase and causing a 20-fold jump in heat-related deaths, the United Nations said.

The decade through 2010 was the warmest for both hemispheres and for land and sea, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization said today in an e-mailed report examining climate trends for the beginning of the millennium. Almost 94 percent of countries logged their warmest 10 years on record, it said.

“The decadal rate of increase between 1991-2000 and 2001-2010 was unprecedented,” WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said in a statement. “Rising concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases are changing our climate, with far-reaching implications for our environment and our oceans.”

READ MORE:  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-03/un-charts-unprecedented-global-warming-since-2000.html

Climate model forecast is revised

The UK Met Office has revised one of its forecasts for how much the world may warm in the next few years.

It says the average temperature is likely to be 0.43 C above the long-term average by 2017, as opposed to an earlier forecast suggesting a difference of 0.54C.

The explanation is that a new kind of computer model using different parameters has been used.
The Met Office stresses that the work is experimental.

It says it still stands by its longer-term projections that forecast significant warming over the course of this century.

The forecasts are all based on a comparison with the average global temperature over the period 1971-2000.

READ MORE:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20947224