Jan 06 2015

An engineer explains why the IPCC climate models failed to predict the reality of the last 20 years

Category: environment,global warming,government,Group-think — harmonicminer @ 9:39 pm

This is all pretty theoretical, and may be hard for some to follow. But the point is simple: even in purely theoretical terms, IPCC climate models are fatally flawed because they are too simple, and allow themselves to be driven by only a single variable, CO2, and assumptions of CO2 climate sensitivity expressed as a constant (which those models make wild guesses at).

Thankfully, we don’t have to trust only the theoretical reasons that the IPCC climate models are flawed. We have actual data. Global warming essentially stopped around 16-19 years ago. Even the traditional “97 percenters” have had to admit that. The models of the mid 1990s that the so called “97 percent” relied on have been falsified. Simple as that. So the modelers keep coming up with ad hoc and post hoc explanations for why the models didn’t work, none of which can actually be tested, and none of which fit all the available facts. And I thought spinning was limited to political consultants. Oh, I forgot… the whole global warming enterprise IS essentially a political one, not a scientific one. But I digress.

One way to read the attached article is as one explanation for why the known bad models didn’t work. In a way, all of the attempts by the 97 percenters to come up with explanations for why their models failed are an acknowledgement of the second equation in the article linked above, ∆T = k.log( ∆CO2) + f(∆x), where the last term, f(∆x), has nothing at all to do with CO2. Apparently, there is at least one such term in any equation that actually describes the reality we now know. Read the article. It should make at least some sense to you. The triangle is read as “change in.”

The point: CO2 is not the only, or probably even a major, variable in climate change, which is reality, and has always happened over sufficient time.

Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t seem to have caught up with the facts of the situation (namely, that global warming has stopped, the IPCC is dead wrong, but so much entrenched power and privilege is driving the global warming scam that it won’t die easily), and still believe the scare-mongering. It’s kind of sad, really.

Nov 07 2011

Don’t Sweat It

Category: global warming — harmonicminer @ 11:02 pm

It’s getting cooler in the USA, not warmer. See discussion in Watts Up With That.

Exit question: will all the people who signed onto panic stricken policy solutions to the non-existent problem of global warming recant someday? Or is the science so conclusive in their minds that they can afford to ignore the science? What, that last sentence didn’t make any sense?

Neither do they.

Jul 28 2011

New science is unsettling to global warming alarmists

Category: global warming — harmonicminer @ 3:54 pm

New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism

 

NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth’s atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.

Study co-author Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite, reports that real-world data from NASA’s Terra satellite contradict multiple assumptions fed into alarmist computer models.

 

The science is “settled,” is it?  I wonder if any of the prominent politicians, religious leaders, et. al., who climbed on the anthropogenic-global-warming bandwagon, because it seemed the popular and publicly respectable thing to do, will now recant.  Maybe ask to have their signatures withdrawn from documents like this?

Probably not.  Better to just airbrush it out of existence by pretending it never happened.

And, for future reference, people.  The next time someone approaches you to ask you to sign a petition that basically boils down to a demand that government restrict freedom and redistribute more economic resources, just say no.  Whatever the reason you’re given, however wonderful and well meant it sounds, don’t do it.  If your knees get wobbly, find out who ELSE is for it, and ask yourself if you really want to be in that company, or associated with those people.

 

Aug 08 2010

Ice Chunk Larger Than Manhattan Breaks Off Greenland Glacier

Category: global warming — amuzikman @ 8:55 am

Further proof of anthropogenic global warming – the debate is over!  This from Yahoo News:

A chunk of ice four times the size of Manhattan has calved from Greenland’s Petermann Glacier, scientists announced today.

The last time the Arctic lost such a large chunk of ice was in 1962.

“In the early morning hours of August 5, 2010, an ice island four times the size of Manhattan was born in northern Greenland,” said Andreas Muenchow, associate professor of physical ocean science and engineering at the University of Delaware.

Satellite imagery of this remote area at 81 degrees north latitude and 61 degrees west longitude, about 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) south of the North Pole, reveals that Petermann Glacier lost about one-quarter of its 43-mile- (70-km-) long floating ice-shelf.

Trudy Wohlleben of the Canadian Ice Service discovered the ice island within hours after NASA’s MODIS-Aqua satellite took the data on Aug. 5, at 8:40 UTC (4:40 EDT), Muenchow said.

Petermann Glacier, the parent of the new ice island, is one of the two largest remaining glaciers in Greenland that terminate in floating shelves. The glacier connects the great Greenland ice sheet directly with the ocean.

The new ice island has an area of at least 100 square miles (260 square kilometers) and a thickness up to half the height of the Empire State Building, which is 1,454 feet (443 meters) from the ground to the top of its lightning rod.

“The freshwater stored in this ice island could keep the Delaware or Hudson rivers flowing for more than two years. It could also keep all U.S. public tap water flowing for 120 days,” Muenchow said.

The island will enter Nares Strait, a deep waterway between northern Greenland and Canada where, since 2003, a University of Delaware ocean and ice observing array has been maintained by Muenchow with collaborators in Oregon, British Columbia, and England.

“In Nares Strait, the ice island will encounter real islands that are all much smaller in size,” Muenchow said. “The newly born ice-island may become land-fast, block the channel, or it may break into smaller pieces as it is propelled south by the prevailing ocean currents. From there, it will likely follow along the coasts of Baffin Island and Labrador, to reach the Atlantic within the next two years.”

The last time such a massive ice island formed was in 1962 when Ward Hunt Ice Shelf calved a 230 square-mile (600 square-km) island, smaller pieces of which became lodged between real islands inside Nares Strait. Petermann Glacier spawned smaller ice islands in 2001 (34 square miles, or 88 square km) and 2008 (10 square miles, or 26 square km). In 2005, the Ayles Ice Shelf disintegrated and became an ice island (34 square miles) about 60 miles (97 km) to the west of Petermann Fjord.

In July, a chunk of ice the size of Manhattan fell off of Greenland’s Jakobshavn Isbrae glacier.

On a related note – In January, 2006 Al Gore said we have ten years left to save our planet from a “scorching”.  Since it has been almost five years since he made that comment shouldn’t we all be half-scorched by now?  Or was that just a pick-up line used by Gore on his masseuse?

May 24 2010

More potpouri

Category: environment,global warming,God,Group-think,Israel,politics,race,racism,religion,theology — harmonicminer @ 8:50 am

Racializing the news

It’s unseasonably cold at my house today, too.  It snowed this morning, a little, very unusual for this time of the year.

Why Israel Can’t Rely on American Jewish “Leaders”

This is what passes for “leadership” in American Jewry. A kabuki dance is orchestrated by an Obama fan to gather other Obama fans to air the mildest criticism and to avoid challenging the factual representations of an administration that is the most hostile to the Jewish state in history. As one Israeli hand who definitely isn’t going to be invited to any meetings with this president put it: “They may be fine rabbis, but they are out of their league here.” And by not directly and strongly taking on the president, they are, in fact, enabling the president’s anti-Israel stance. It is, come to think of it, more than an embarrassment; it is an egregious misuse of their status and it is every bit as dangerous as the quietude of American Jews in the 1930s.

Indeed.

Read Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy first, then read The Cost of Discipleship… again, if you’ve read it before, through the lens of knowing more about Bonhoeffer.

Apple removes app showing “violent and hateful passages from The Qur’an”; anti-Bible, anti-Christian app still on sale

Apr 03 2010

Time to go to war?

Category: global warming,government,media,science — harmonicminer @ 8:15 am

The world according to James Lovelock: Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change

Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change from radically impacting on our lives over the coming decades. This is the stark conclusion of James Lovelock, the globally respected environmental thinker and independent scientist who developed the Gaia theory.

It follows a tumultuous few months in which public opinion on efforts to tackle climate change has been undermined by events such as the climate scientists’ emails leaked from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit.

“I don’t think we’re yet evolved to the point where we’re clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change,” said Lovelock in his first in-depth interview since the theft of the UEA emails last November. “The inertia of humans is so huge that you can’t really do anything meaningful.”

One of the main obstructions to meaningful action is “modern democracy”, he added. “Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.”

After all, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War. And Woodrow Wilson had at least 150,000 people arrested during WW I for “sedition.” So I guess Mr. Lovelock is in favor of incarcerating SUVs. And wood fireplaces.

Personally, I’m in favor of incarcerating fraudulent scientists… but that’s just me.  From reading the rest of the article, it sounds like Lovelock might agree.  However, his notion that so-called experts should rule over the benighted masses, who are just too dim to understand the elevated mental process of the elite, is reminiscent of the Progressive era that gave us Margaret Sanger, Mussolini, and eugenics, or in a slightly earlier time the notion that the interior shape of the skull was determinative for intelligence.

…………

Lovelock, who 40 years ago originated the idea that the planet is a giant, self-regulating organism, the so-called Gaia theory, added that he has little sympathy for the climate scientists caught up in the UEA email scandal. He said he had not read the original emails, “I felt reluctant to pry”, but that their reported content had left him feeling “utterly disgusted”.

“Fudging the data in any way whatsoever is quite literally a sin against the holy ghost of science,” he said. “I’m not religious, but I put it that way because I feel so strongly. It’s the one thing you do not ever do. You’ve got to have standards.”

Lovelock’s continuing touching faith in the underlying science of global warming is probably forgivable in a man of his years, who does not want the last two decades of his life to have been wasted time.  But whether or not HIS data is good, and fairly recorded and interpreted, is irrelevant.  The fact is that the case for global warming was made up mostly of computer models and attempts to draw huge conclusions from subtle data changes flowing from the interplay of enormously complex variables, by a thousand different scientists who understood that the fix was in, and career advancement was in that direction.  Does Lovelock think that the recent revelations represent the only fudged data, the only special pleading, the only career enhancing favorable interpretation (or, in this case, unfavorable)?

In any case, Lovelock’s comment on the desirability of discarding democracy in favor of rule by the elites is exactly what many on the Right have been saying for some time, namely that the new home of international socialism is the environmental movement (a thing quite distinct from mere “conservation”, clean water, clean air, and the like).

Based on who their fellow travelers are, I can’t disagree.

Apr 02 2010

Russia, Canada, global warming, the Arctic, and Big Brother

Category: global warming,national security,Russia — harmonicminer @ 8:43 am

A Russian view on Climate Change, the Arctic and Russia’s National Security

What does Prime Minister Stephen Harper have in common with the Canadian Minister of Defence? He shares a sinister, hypocritical and belligerent discourse bordering on the lunatic fringe of the international community. Yet Canada’s new-found megalomania is the least of Russia’s worries: How can climate change in the Arctic threaten her national security?

From Canada, Russia has become used to seeing and hearing positions of sheer arrogance, unadulterated insolence and provocative intrusion. Take for example Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s declaration that Canada is “an Arctic Superpower” (what all thirteen of them?) and the idiotic reference by the Canadian Minister of Defence, Peter McKay, about Russian “overflights” outside Canadian airspace. How can you “overfly” outside?

What these statements hide is Canada´s nervousness at the fact that international law backs up Russia’s claim to a hefty slice of the Arctic and that international law will favour Russia in delineating the new Arctic boundaries. Inside Russia’s continental shelf lie huge deposits of gold, diamonds, nickel, cobalt and copper.

The immense importance of the Arctic to the Russian economy can be seen by the fact that 22 per cent of Russia’s exports and 20 per cent of her GDP come from products obtained from inside the Arctic Circle, where around 90 per cent of Russia’s hydrocarbon reserves lie. Canada, on the other hand, derives less than one per cent of its GDP from products which come from this region.

………………..

Given that the permafrost covers 66 per cent of Russian territory, a dramatic change in climatic conditions could threaten all engineering structures in this region, considers Averyanov.

Besides this, Yuri Averyanov considers that interstate conflict is a real possibility due to the new policies of allies of the USA in the Arctic in expanding exploration and research operations. Indeed, the possibility is referred to in the Russia National Security Strategy, adopted in Spring 2009 and mentioning the use of armed force and conflict over hydrocarbon resources.

In the event of a showdown between Russia and Canada, it is obvious that Russia would win. Yet Canada is becoming more and more arrogant, feeling its back covered perhaps by Big Brother to the south. Maybe it is time for Canada to stick its nose into its own affairs and forget adventures which might bring it dire consequences.

How about that? The Russians, of all people, referring to the USA as “Big Brother.”  Anyway, since “hockey stick” global warming is looking less and less likely (not that it ever looked very likely), the Russians should relax.  And in the worst case, both Canada and Russia will be so busy fending off rabid polar bears that they won’t have time to worry about anything else.

It is a uniquely Russian weirdness to think they own more of the arctic than Canada.  Just to get the picture:


It looks to me like Greenland has a better claim than Russia.  Or maybe if Russia gets too uppity, the fine folk at Ward Hunt Island will mount a punitive expedition, using the massive Canadian navy.

Mar 14 2010

Fear of global warming leads to suicide… and not just economically

Category: Al Gore,environment,global warming,media,society — harmonicminer @ 8:18 am

It would seem that Al Gore is winning converts all over.  Tragically.

Baby Survives 3 Days in Argentina with Bullet Wound in Chest

A 7-month-old baby survived alone for three days with a bullet wound in its chest beside the bodies of its parents and brother, who died in an apparent suicide pact brought on by the couple’s terror of global warming, the Argentine press said Saturday.

The incident, reported by the daily Clarin, occurred in a modest dwelling in the city of Goya in the northeastern province of Corrientes, where Francisco Lotero, 56, and Miriam Coletti, 22, lived with their two small children.

According to sources cited by the Buenos Aires morning paper, the couple’s neighbors smelled a strong odor coming from the Lotero’s house on Thursday.

Police entered the home and found a Dantesque scene: the lifeless bodies of the couple, each shot in the chest, and their 2-year-old son, who had been shot in the back.

In another room, police found a 7-month-old baby still alive but covered in blood from a bullet wound in the chest. It was taken to hospital immediately and its condition is improving hourly, according to doctors’ reports.

The cops found a letter on the table alluding to the couple’s worry about global warming and their anger at the government’s lack of interest in the matter.

Obviously, these tragically misguided parents hadn’t heard that Obama was elected in 2008, which means that the sea levels won’t be rising after all.

You probably won’t see any coverage of this in the US media, although if the suicide note had said the parents were worried about the socialist takeover of the entire Western Hemisiphere, led by the US, the suicide/murder would probably be blamed on talk radio…  and maybe Sarah Palin.

h/t: bazzbo

Mar 08 2010

Big Business is not in the Republicans’ pocket; its hands are in YOUR pocket, if you pay taxes… and everyone does, one way or another

Category: capitalism,corporations,economy,election 2008,energy,environment,global warming,Obama — harmonicminer @ 9:10 am

At Townhall, Jonah Goldberg points out that big business supported Obama 2 to 1 against McCain, because it hoped to cash in at taxpayer expense:

It’s worth remembering that Obama was the preferred candidate of Wall Street, and the industry gave to Democrats by a 2-1 margin at the beginning of last year. The top business donor to Democrats in 2008 was Goldman Sachs, and nearly 75 cents out of every dollar of Goldman’s political donations from 2006 to 2008 went to Democrats. Few can gainsay the investment, given how well Goldman Sachs has done under the Obama administration.

It’s not just Wall Street. Obama led in fundraising from most big business sectors, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Aside from the desire to back the winner, and the cultural liberalness of East and West Coast plutocrats, why did Obama get so much support from precisely the constituency he demonizes?

Because it was good business. A host of big corporations bet that the much-vaunted Obama era would materialize. For instance, nearly 30 major corporations and environmental groups invested in Obama’s promise to force the American economy into a new cap-and-trade system via the United States Climate Action Partnership (CAP).

Whatever the benefits of such a scheme for the economy and environment as a whole, these corporations, led by General Electric, were looking simply to cash in on government policies. GE, which makes many wind, solar and nuclear doodads that would be profitable under “cap-and-trade,” was poised to make billions if Obama succeeded in seizing control of the “carbon economy.” GE is still protecting its bet, but after the failure in Copenhagen, the “climategate” scandals and perhaps most significantly, that implosion of Obama’s new progressive era, several heavyweights — Caterpillar, BP and ConocoPhillips — have pulled out of CAP, with rumors that more will follow. There are similar rumblings of discontent within the ranks of PhRMA, the trade association for the pharmaceutical industry, which had cut an $80 billion deal with the White House last year for its support of ObamaCare, only to see the whole thing unravel.

The lesson here is fairly simple: Big business is not “right wing,” it’s vampiric. It will pursue any opportunity to make a big profit at little risk. Getting in bed with politicians is increasingly the safest investment for these “crony capitalists.” But only if the politicians can actually deliver. The political failures of the Obama White House have translated into business failures for firms more eager to make money off taxpayers instead of consumers.

That’s good news. The bad news will be if the Republicans once again opt to be the cheap dates of big business. For years, the GOP defended big business in the spirit of free enterprise while businesses never showed much interest in the principle themselves. Now that their bet on the Democrats has crapped out, it’d be nice if they stopped trying to game the system and focused instead on satisfying the consumer.

Go back and read the title of this post. Then read this, to which I’ve linked before.  Ignore the reviews, pro and con, and just take it on its own terms… and see if you can refute the history.  I think you can’t.

There hasn’t been a “free market” in the USA for sometime.  The government’s power to tax and regulate, and to give tax breaks and regulatory exceptions, is the reason there is so much lobbying in the Beltway.  It could not have been otherwise, once corporate taxes got high, and the regulation of business became one of the chief functions of government.  The merry-go-round career path of government “service” to lobbyist, and often back to government “service,” is the biggest indicator of this.  The essential role of a lobbyist in the modern world is to figure out who should get the money that the lobbyist’s principals have to donate.

When big business couldn’t count on government to help it get captive markets, and to restrain competitors, it had to compete for consumers on the basis of price and quality.  That’s why Rockefeller kept cutting the price of kerosene in the 19th century, not exactly an act of violence against the consumers of the day.

It’s unfortunate that so many people still believe that we live in a “free market” economy and that “the market” is the cause for so much economic woe today.  But we have had a “mixed economy” that often crossed the line into “crony capitalism” or just plain “state capitalism” (especially in time of war), for over a century.  The government is by far the most responsible for our current economic mess.  The lobbyists of big business (the johns) wouldn’t have any place to spend their money if politicians weren’t pimping themselves out.  Those lobbyists are often the ones who write campaign finance law and regulations.

It’s simple.  If big business didn’t think it was going to get something out of it, why would it donate so much money to politicians?  And more particularly, why did it give so much to Obama?

Let’s hope that if the Republicans do get some power back, they don’t blow it this time.

Mar 03 2010

Another Honor For Al Gore

Category: Al Gore,global warming,humor — amuzikman @ 11:52 pm

The University of Tennessee has announced it is going to award Al Gore an Honorary Doctor of Laws and Humane Letters in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology because according to University Chancellor, Jimmy Cheek, “Vice President Gore’s career has been marked by visionary leadership, and his work has quite literally changed our planet for the better”.

In keeping with the spirit in which this degree will be awarded I’d like to propose some additional honorary degree candidates:

The Culinary Institute of America should nominate Hannibal Lechter for an Honorary Doctorate in the Culinary Arts for his “passionate dedication to exploring new culinary possibilities combining fava beans, chianti and human organs”.

The Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government should nominate Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for an Honorary Doctorate in International Development for their “unswerving commitment to world peace through open international trade and free exchange of technology”.

The USC School of Cinematic Arts should nominate Larry Flynt for an Honorary Doctorate in Film & Television Production for his “body of work celebrating group copulatory interpretive movement”.

The Cleveland Institute of Art should nominate Charles Manson for the Sharon Tate Honorary Doctorate in Biomedical Art/Interior Design for his “bold, fresh and daring integrated use of human blood as both interior design element, artistic-political statement, and Beatles tribute.”

Fuller Theological Seminary should nominate Madelyn Murray O’Hair for an Honorary Doctorate in Practical Theology for her “lifelong activism related to the subject of the theological equivalent of the unified field theory”.

The Claremont Graduate University, Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management should nominate Bernie Madoff for the P.T. Barnum Honorary Doctoral degree in Financial Engineering for his “proven commitment to wealth redistribution and contributions to the Obama model of economic justice”.

As for the University of Tennessee I only wish they had their tongues firmly planted in the esteemed Chancellor Cheek.  In light of recent disclosures concerning the reliability of anthropogenic global warming data the truth of this latest accolade for Al Gore is more bizarre than anything that could be imagined.

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