Alaska’s Hubbard Glacier is advancing at the rate of seven feet per day!

This past week, I received a literally astounding report from Yakutat, Alaska’s city manager, Skip Ryman, forwarded to me by Kerri Thoreson, concerning the rapid advancement of the Hubbard Glacier towards Gilbert Point near Yakutat at the astonishing rate of two meters (seven feet) per day!

Skip gave me the Army Corp of Engineers special Web site for the Hubbard Glacier. On Tuesday, we pulled up some absolutely amazing photos of the advancing glacier in color. One can easily see the expanding wall of ice. It’s HUGE! Since the Corp of Engineers ordinarily protects and maintains possession of the scientific information they generate, it’s certainly unusual for them to ‘open up’ like this. But, as Randy Mann and I have often said, these are days of Wide Weather ‘EXTREMES’?

But, even the dedicated global warmists need to know the truth about the recent extended period of global cooling caused by our ‘SILENT SUN.’ So, if our readers try to access the site and fail, keep trying. It’s perfectly legal and the Corp has set it up for public access. As Skip says in his e-mail, “ignore the admonishment and continue to the site. The Corp can’t ‘turn off’ the warning as it is part of their system. There will be no ‘men in black’ in black helicopters to spirit you away for just looking at this incredible site. I was literally ‘blown away!’”

The Corp is involved because ‘when’ and ‘if’ the Hubbard Glacier eventually closes the Russell Fjord, the fjord will fill with fresh water, becoming a 30-mile-long lake creating a new 40,000-cubic-feet-per-second river system. This will have an extremely ‘negative’ economic impact on Yakutat and the surrounding regions. It’s possible that at the shocking rate of seven feet per day in its advancement, the Hubbard Glacier could close the fjord by later this summer, or even prior to that time, if the current rate of advancement speeds up, say to perhaps 10 or 12 feet per day.

By carefully monitoring the Army Corp of Engineers Web site, we residents of North Idaho can be alerted to these type of events in ‘real time’ data presentations, not mere heresay. It looks like an interesting summer ahead, weatherwise and otherwise. I’ll have more glacial updates as they occur. Remember, we have THE RIGHT TO KNOW!

Not only has our ‘SILENT SUN,’ almost completely devoid of sunspots, been at least partially responsible for the expanding glaciers in Alaska, Norway and elsewhere, but ‘Ole Sol’ is likewise, in my not-so-humble climatological opinion, to blame for our recent colder, snowier and wetter spring seasons in North Idaho and the surrounding Inland Empire.

Heavier snows—up to six inches or more above 5,000 feet—have accumulated in the nearby mountains on a daily basis since early May. It may be mid June or later before Glacier Park’s ‘Going-to-the-Sun Highway’ opens. (Next week, we’ll take a look at what’s happening to the glaciers in the park. Are they also beginning to expand? Find out the truth in just seven days.) See post here.

Another sign that the arctic ice recovery is continuing as per recent post.

Anthony Watts, author of the weblog Watts Up With That, has completed an outstanding, clearly written report that documents a major problem with the use of the United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) to assess multi-decadal surface temperature trends. The report is “Watts, A. 2009: Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable? 28 pages, March 2009 The Heartland Institute.

The Executive Summary reads:

“Global warming is one of the most serious issues of our times. Some experts claim the rise in temperature during the past century was “unprecedented” and proof that immediate action to reduce human greenhouse gas emissions must begin. Other experts say the warming was very modest and the case for action has yet to be made. The reliability of data used to document temperature trends is of great importance in this debate. We can’t know for sure if global warming is a problem if we can’t trust the data.

The official record of temperatures in the continental United States comes from a network of 1,221 climate-monitoring stations overseen by the National Weather Service, a department of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Until now, no one had ever conducted a comprehensive review of the quality of the measurement environment of those stations.

During the past few years I recruited a team of more than 650 volunteers to visually inspect and photographically document more than 860 of these temperature stations. We were shocked by what we found. We found stations located next to the exhaust fans of air conditioning units, surrounded by asphalt parking lots and roads, on blistering-hot rooftops, and near sidewalks and buildings that absorb and radiate heat. We found 68 stations located at wastewater treatment plants, where the process of waste digestion causes temperatures to be higher than in surrounding areas.

In fact, we found that 89 percent of the stations - nearly 9 of every 10 - fail to meet the National Weather Service’s own siting requirements that stations must be 30 meters (about 100 feet) or more away from an artificial heating or radiating/reflecting heat source.  In other words, 9 of every 10 stations are likely reporting higher or rising temperatures because they are badly sited.

Larger image here. Lampasas Texas shown as an example.

It gets worse. We observed that changes in the technology of temperature stations over time also has caused them to report a false warming trend. We found major gaps in the data record that were filled in with data from nearby sites, a practice that propagates and compounds errors. We found that adjustments to the data by both NOAA and another government agency, NASA, cause recent temperatures to look even higher.

The conclusion is inescapable: The U.S. temperature record is unreliable. The errors in the record exceed by a wide margin the purported rise in temperature of 0.7C (about 1.2F) during the twentieth century. Consequently, this record should not be cited as evidence of any trend in temperature that may have occurred across the U.S. during the past century. Since the U.S. record is thought to be “the best in the world,” it follows that the global database is likely similarly compromised and unreliable.

This report presents actual photos of more than 100 temperature stations in the U.S., many of them demonstrating vividly the siting issues we found to be rampant in the network. Photographs of all 865 stations that have been surveyed so far can be found here , where station photos can be browsed by state or searched for by name.”

This is a report that is very much worth reading! Hardcopies are available for purchase from The Heartland Institute 19 South LaSalle Street #903 Chicago Illinois 60603.

The Global Warming Hypothesis

Albert Einstein once said, “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” Einstein’s words express a foundational principle of science intoned by the logician, Karl Popper:  Falsifiability.  In order to verify a hypothesis there must be a test by which it can be proved false.  A thousand observations may appear to verify a hypothesis, but one critical failure could result in its demise.  The history of science is littered with such examples.

A hypothesis that cannot be falsified by empirical observations, is not science.  The current hypothesis on anthropogenic global warming (AGW), presented by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is no exception to this principle.  Indeed, it is the job of scientists to expose the weaknesses of this hypothesis as it undergoes peer review.  This paper will examine one key criterion for falsification: ocean heat.

Ocean heat plays a crucial role in the AGW hypothesis, which maintains that climate change is dominated by human-added, well-mixed green house gasses (GHG).  IR radiation that is absorbed and re-emitted by these gases, particularly CO2, is said to be amplified by positive feedback from clouds and water vapor.  This process results in a gradual accumulation of heat throughout the climate system, which includes the atmosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, lithosphere, and, most importantly, the hydrosphere.  The increase in retained heat is projected to result in rising atmospheric temperatures of 2-6C by the year 2100.

In 2005 James Hansen, Josh Willis, and Gavin Schmidt of NASA coauthored a significant article (in collaboration with twelve other scientists), on the “Earth’s Energy Imbalance:  Confirmation and Implications” (Science, 3 June 2005, 1431-35).  This paper affirmed the critical role of ocean heat as a robust metric for AGW.  “Confirmation of the planetary energy imbalance,” they maintained, “can be obtained by measuring the heat content of the ocean, which must be the principal reservoir for excess energy” (1432).

In 2007 Roger Pielke, Sr. suggested that ocean heat should be used not just to monitor the energy imbalance in the climate system, but as a “litmus test” for falsifying the IPCC�s AGW hypothesis (Pielke, “A Litmus Test”, climatesci.org, April 4, 2007).

A comparison of these projections to observed data is shown below.  Despite expectations of warming, temperature measurements of the upper 700m of the ocean from the ARGO array show no increase from 2003 through 2008.  Willis calculates a net loss of -0.12 (plus or minus 0.35) x 1022Joules per year (Pielke, Physics Today,55) from mid-2003 to the end of 2008 (Dr. Pielke received permission from Josh Willis to extend the ARGO data to the end of 2008).

According to a recent analysis of ARGO data by Craig Loehle, senior scientist at the Illinois-based National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, the loss is -0.35 (plus or minus 0.2) x 1022Joules per year from mid-2003 to the end of 2007 (see Loehle, 2009: “Cooling of the global ocean since 2003.” Energy & Environment, Vol. 20, No. 1&2, 101-104(4)).  Loehle used a more complex method than Willis to calculate this trend, enabling him to reduce the margin of error.

My calculations for observed global heat, shown below, are based on observed upper ocean heat.  Since upper ocean heat is calculated to be 80% of the global total, observed global heat equals approximately 125% (1/0.8) of the observed upper ocean heat.

PROJECTED vs. OBSERVED HEAT ACCUMULATION, 2003-2008 (6 YEARS)

Model
Projected Global Heat Accumulation

Heat Deficit.  The graph below shows the increasing deficit of upper ocean heat from 2003 through 2008 based on GISS projections by Hansen, Willis, Schmidt, et. al.  Actual heat accumulation is plotted from observed data (using ARGO) and shows the overall linear trend (after Willis and Loehle).  Seasonal fluctuations and error bars are not shown.

Read full post here.

SPPI’s authoritative Monthly CO2 Report for April 2009 reveals that:

(1) Unpredicted ocean cooling over the past five years disproves the theory that manmade “global warming” has a significant effect on the Earth’s temperature. None of the IPCC’s computer models had predicted ocean cooling. All had predicted ocean warming. They were wrong.

See larger image here

(2) Rapid surface atmospheric cooling, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, has now continued for seven and a half years.

See larger image here

(3) The IPCC assumes CO2 concentration will reach 836 ppmv by 2100. However, for seven years, CO2 concentration has headed straight for only 575 ppmv by 2100. This alone halves all of the IPCC’s temperature projections.

(4) Since 1980 temperature has risen at only 2.5 F (1.5 C) per century, not the 7 F (3.9 C) the IPCC imagines. For 600 million years there has been no correlation between CO2 concentration and the Earth’s temperature.

See larger image here

(5) Sea level rose just 8 inches in the 20th century and has been rising at just 1 foot/century since 1993. Though James Hansen of NASA says sea level will rise 246 feet, sea level has scarcely risen since the beginning of 2006.

See larger image here

(6) Sea ice extent in the Arctic is above the 30-year average, and has set a nine-year record high. In the Antarctic, sea ice extent reached a record high in 2007, and is now the third-highest in 30 years. Global sea ice extent shows little trend for 30 years.

(7) The Accumulated Cyclone Energy Index is a 2-year running monthly sum of activity in all hurricanes, typhoons and tropical cyclones. It shows that there is now less severe tropical-storm activity than at any time in 30 years.

(8) Solar activity is at a 100-year record low. We may be facing a 70-year Maunder Minimum - extreme cooling.

(9) Science Focus this month studies “data revisionism” - how scientific results are bent to promote false alarmism.

See larger image here of GISS raw versus adjusted data for Santa Rosa, one of many such examples.

Finally, check out our monthly selection of scientific papers, and meet the Top Ten “Global Warming” skeptics in the full report here.

Be sure also to see Lord Monckton respond back to Gavin Schmidt’s attacks in this SPPI post here. He begins “Yet again Gavin Schmidt, who writes the political RealClimate blog for “global-warming” alarmists that is promoted by two of the authors of the now-discredited “hockey-stick” graph falsely abolishing the medieval warm period, has inaccurately criticized me in his blog. This paper sets the facts straight. On 2 May 2009, under the title Monckton’s deliberate manipulation, Gavin Schmidt, who is paid by NASA but may not be as scientific or as impartial as a government servant ought to be, posted a blog entry that we shall publish in full, paragraph by paragraph, with our commentary in bold face.”

By Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor Timesonline

LONDON and other cities could see summer temperatures rise to more than 10C above those in the surrounding countryside, according to Met Office research being used to help devise the first official climate change map of Britain. Scientists have been studying a phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect, in which cities become significantly hotter than the areas around them because of the heat they generate themselves.

Big cities such as London, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow already reach temperatures 2C - 3C above their surroundings in the summer. Scientists fear that difference could grow four to fivefold as hotter weather combines with soaring energy use and population growth, making such temperature gaps more frequent and more extreme.

The research is linked to a wider project aimed at helping scientists predict the impact rising temperatures will have on different parts of the country. The full results will be released next month by Hilary Benn, the environment secretary. Vicky Pope, the head of climate change advice at the Met Office, said: “As the climate gets warmer, sweltering summer temperatures will combine with rising energy use, the heat-retaining properties of buildings, and the sheer volume of people, to push temperatures higher and higher. It may sometimes make life in the metropolis intolerable. Imagine the scorching conditions that commuters will face on London’s Tube network.”

The warning follows the disclosure by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that global temperatures have risen by almost 1C since preindustrial times. The panel predicts global temperatures will have risen by 2C by 2050 with total warming of up to 5-6C possible by 2100. Such findings are now widely accepted but questions remain, especially regarding the impact on cities, where more than half the world’s population live. New York - hotter in summer than British cities - is regularly 7C-8C hotter than nearby rural areas.

In Britain, 90% of the population lives in urban or suburban areas so the impact on people is potentially huge. The research is based partly on data from heatwaves, such as the one in 2003, and on computer projections. It also looked at cities such as Athens and Beirut which suffer from the urban heat phenomenon. The August 2003 heatwave saw England’s daytime temperatures top 30C for 10 days and exceed 35C in many places. The same heatwave saw temperatures in the upper 30Cs in the centres of cities such as London, Birmingham and Manchester. This was often 6C-7C above those in rural areas.

Researchers fear central city temperatures may exceed 40C as the century progresses. “The high temperatures of 2003 were extraordinary but may become common by 2050 and even be seen as relatively cool by 2100,” said Pope. One of the factors that made London so hot was its inability to cool down. At night during the heatwave, the city centre was sometimes 9C warmer than its surrounding green belt.

This is because rural and suburban areas lose heat at night but in cities the materials used for hard surfaces store more solar energy and lose it more slowly. This effect is amplified by the heat from lights, electrical equipment and cars. Also, as cities get warmer, they consume more power trying to stay cool, because of airconditioners and fridges working harder. Richard Betts, head of climate impacts at the Met Office, who oversaw the research, said Tokyo showed what British cities might face. Its tall, densely packed buildings and high energy use mean the Japanese capital is often 10C hotter than the surrounding countryside. “We must change how we plan cities, to maximise green spaces and create structures that dissipate heat,” said Betts.

Urban heat islands have a serious impact on health. In 2003 there were 2,091 more deaths than normal between August 4 and 13 in Britain, most of them among elderly people in southeast England. For people aged over 75 there was a 33% increase in mortality.

The UKMO is promoting and the author is endorsing the IPCC forecasts which are failing miserably. They are ironically now “studying” the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect that was said to not be important to global temperatures. The Hadley Center (like NOAA) makes no adjustment for UHI based on Jones et. al. (1990) and later Parker (2004) who claimed that the non-climatic bias due to urbanization is less than one-tenth of the global trend. Recently Jones coauthored a paper that showed significant UHI contamination in China but he claimed it did not apply globally and now the UKMO is using it to pump up the scare tactics for the UK. Read more on the UHI here.

In the United states, the number of state record highs has been lower this decade than any decade since the 1800s.

Announcing a DC Seminar by Dr. Roger Pielke Sr.

Research has shown that the focus on just carbon dioxide as the dominant human climate forcing is too narrow.  We have found that natural variations are still quite important, and moreover, the human influence is significant, but the human climate influence involves a diverse range of first-order climate forcings, including, but not limited to the human input of CO2 (e.g. see NRC, 2005 and Kabat et al, 2004). These other forcings, such as land use change and from atmospheric pollution aerosols, may have a greater effect on our climate than the effects that have been claimed for CO2 (e.g. see).

In his talk, Dr. Pielke will document that:

The IPCC and CCSP assessments, as well as the science statements completed by the AGU, AMS and NRC, are completed by a small subset of climate scientists who are often the same individuals.  This oligarchy has prevented science of the climate system to be properly communicated to policymakers (e.g. see, see and see).

The acceptance of CO2 as a pollutant by the EPA , yet it is a climate forcing not a traditional atmospheric pollutant, opens up a wide range of other climate forcings which the EPA could similarly regulate (e.g. land use; water vapor).

Policymakers should look for win-win policies in order to improve the environment that we live in (e.g. see).  The costs and benefits of the regulation of the emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere need to be evaluated together with all other possible environmental regulations.  The goal should be to seek politically and technologically practical ways to reduce the vulnerability of the environment and society to the entire spectrum of human-caused and natural risks (e.g. see Chapter E in Kabat et al 2004).

Dr. Roger A. Pielke Sr. is Senior Research Scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado in Boulder and Professor Emeritus of the Department of Atmospheric Science, ColoradoStateUniversity, Fort Collins.  His books include Mesoscale Meteorological Modeling (1984; 2nd edition 2002), The Hurricane (1990), Human Impacts on Weather and Climate with W.R. Cotton (1995; 2nd Edition 2006), and Hurricanes: Their Nature and Impacts on Society with R.A. Pielke, Jr (1997).  He has published over 330 papers in peer-reviewed journals, 50 chapters in books, and co-edited 9 books.  Dr. Pielke is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union in 2004 and has served as editor for numerous scientific publications.

The Marshall Institute’s Climate Change and Energy Policy programs provide the public, the media, and policy makers with information and assessments to aid their consideration of those controversial issues.  The talk will be this Thursday, May 14, 2009 at the Army-Navy Club, 901 17th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006. You must register to attend. Please call (202) 296-9655 or email info@marshall.org if you are in the Washington, D.C. area and are interested in attending.

Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) today exposed a “smoking gun” White House memo to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  The memo warns that regulation of small CO2 emitters will have “serious economic consequences” for businesses and the overall economy.

Barrasso produced the memo while questioning EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson during the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee budget hearing. “I received a memo this morning, that’s marked ‘Deliberative: Attorney-Client Privilege’. In this memo Counsel for the White House repeatedly, repeatedly suggests a lack of scientific support for this proposed finding.  This is a smoking gun, saying that your findings were political and not scientific”, Barrasso said.

The EPA has failed to release the memo and has ignored the advice.  The nine-page White House memo undermines the EPA’s reasoning for a proposed finding that greenhouse gases are a danger to public health. “This misuse of the Clean Air Act will be a trigger for overwhelming regulation and lawsuits based on gases emitted from cars, schools, hospitals and small business.  This will affect any number of other sources, including lawn mowers, snowmobiles and farms.  This will be a disaster for the small businesses that drive America,” Barrasso said.

See larger youtube here.

Quoting from the memo to the EPA, Barrasso said that, “making the decision to regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act for the first time is likely to have serious economic consequences for regulated entities throughout the US economy, including small businesses and small communities.” The memo is an amalgamation of findings from government agencies’ sent from the Office of Management and Budget to the EPA. “This smoking gun memo is in stark contrast to the official position presented by the Administration and the EPA Administrator,” Barrasso said.

Despite the findings in the memo, the White House has given the EPA the green light to move ahead with regulation under the Clean Air Act. According to government records, the document was submitted by the OMB as comment on the EPA’s April proposed finding that greenhouse gases are a danger to public health and welfare. The memo - marked as “Deliberative-Attorney Client Privilege” - doesn’t have a date or a named author. But an OMB spokesman confirmed to news agencies that it was prepared by Obama administration staff.

BACKGROUND

The White House brief questions the link between the EPA’s scientific technical endangerment proposal and the EPA’s political summary. Administrator Jackson said in the endangerment summary that “scientific findings in totality point to compelling evidence of human-induced climate change, and that serious risks and potential impacts to public health and welfare have been clearly identified.”

The White House memo notes, the EPA endangerment technical document points out there are several areas where essential behaviors of greenhouse gases are “not well determined” and “not well understood.” It warns about the adequacy of the EPA finding that the gases are a harm to the public when there is “no demonstrated direct health effects,” and the scientific data on which the agency relies are “almost exclusively from non-EPA sources.” The memo contends that the endangerment finding, if finalized by the administration, could make agencies vulnerable to litigation alleging inadequate environmental permitting reviews, adding that the proposal could unintentionally trigger a cascade of regulations.

See Press Release here and Memo here.

By Ian Talley, Wall Street Journal

New federal greenhouse gas emission regulation could expose a raft of smaller emitters to litigation, a nominee for a key post in the Environmental Protection Agency told lawmakers Thursday.

The potential for smaller emitters to be regulated under the Clean Air Act is one reason why business groups warn that EPA regulation of greenhouse gases could create a cascade of legal and regulatory challenges across a much broader array of sectors. The Obama administration has said that isn’t their intent.

Regina McCarthy, nominated to be EPA’s Director of Air and Radiation, told lawmakers that even while the government has flexibility in setting the threshold of emitting facilities to be regulated, she acknowledges the risk of lawsuits to challenge those levels for smaller emitters. Ms. McCarthy’s office is responsible for drafting federal emission rules.

Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.) has put a hold on Ms. McCarthy’s nomination in part because of her responses on the greenhouse gas issue.

Under the Obama administration, the EPA is moving forward to declare greenhouse gas emissions a danger to public health and welfare, which will trigger new rules once finalized. The EPA says that only around 13,000 of the largest emitters, such as refiners, smelters and cement plants would likely be regulated.

Many legal experts say that based on clear Clean Air Act statutes, however, regulations could be applied to any facility that emits more than 100-250 tons a year, including hospitals, schools and farms. Taken in aggregate, farm animals are major greenhouse gas sources because of methane and nitrous oxide emissions from flatulence, belching and manure. Buildings often emit greenhouse gases from internal heating or cooling units.

“It is a myth - EPA will regulate cows, Dunkin Donuts, Pizza Huts, your lawnmower and baby bottles,” EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said earlier this year, dismissing concerns raised by groups such as the Chamber and the National Association of Manufacturers.

But in responses to a senator’s questioning, Ms. McCarthy acknowledged that legal suits could be brought against small emitters.

Asked how she would protect smaller sources against suits, Ms. McCarthy said she would talk with the litigants: “I will request that I be informed if any such notice is filed with regards to a small source, and I will follow-up with the potential litigants.”

Bill Kovacs, the head of environment and regulatory affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said, “There’s no way she can talk to the litigants and control them.” By the Chamber’s estimate, there are 1.5 million facilities—such as large office buildings that have their own boilers—that produce over the 250-ton limit.

Kassie Siegel, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, says her group is prepared to sue for regulation of smaller emitters if the EPA stops at simply large emitters. See more here.

Read how to comment back to the EPA endangerment findings here.

By Chip Knappenberger

Editor Note: Using mainstream models and assumptions, Mr. Knappenberger finds that in the year 2050 with a 83% emissions reduction (the aspirational goal of Waxman-Markey, the beginning steps of which are under vigorous debate), the temperature reduction is nine hundredths of one degree Fahrenheit, or two years of avoided warming. A more realistic climate bill would be a fraction of this amount. The author will respond to technical questions on methodology and results and invites input on alternative scenarios and analyses.

“A full implementation and adherence to the long-run emissions restrictions provisions described by the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill would result only in setting back the projected rise in global temperatures by a few years - a scientifically meaningless prospect.” The economics and the regulatory burdens of climate change bills are forever being analyzed, but the bills’ primary function- mitigating future climate change - is generally ignored. Perhaps that’s because it is simply assumed.

After all, we are barraged daily with the horrors of what the climate will become if we don]t stop emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere (the primary focus being on emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels). So doing something as drastic as that proposed by Waxman-Markey - a more than 80% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from the United States by the year 2050 - must surely lessen the chances of climate catastrophe. Mustn’t it?

But if that were the case, why aren’t the climate impacts being touted? Why aren’t Representatives Waxman and Markey waving around the projected climate success of their bill? Why aren’t they saying: “Economics and regulations be damned. Look how our bill is going to save the earth from human-caused climate apocalypse”?

That reason is that it won’t.  And they know it. That is why they, and everyone else who supports such measures, are mum about the outcome. The one thing, above all others, that they don’t want you to know is this: No matter how the economic and regulatory issues shake out, the bill will have virtually no impact on the future course of the earth’s climate. And this is even in its current “pure” form, without the inevitable watering down to come. So discussion of the bill, instead of focusing on climate impacts, is shrouded in economics and climate alarm.

However, in absolutely zero of these cases are you told, or can you calculate, how much impact you are going to have on the actual climate itself. After all, CO2 emissions are not climate - they are gases. Climate is temperature and precipitation and storms and winds, etc. If the goal of the actions is to prevent global warming, then you shouldn�t really care a hoot about the amount of CO2 emissions that you are reducing, but instead, you want to know how much of the planet you are saving. How much anthropogenic climate change is being prevented by unplugging your cell phone charger, from biking to the park, or from slashing national carbon dioxide emissions?

By the year 2050, the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill would result in a global temperature “savings” of about 0.05C regardless of the IPCC scenario used - this is equivalent to about 2 years’ worth of warming. By the year 2100, the emissions pathways become clearly distinguishable, and so to do the impacts of Waxman-Markey. Read much more here and here and here.

Those who ignore the geologic perspective do so at great risk.  In fall of 1985, geologists warned that a Columbian volcano, Nevado del Ruiz, was getting ready to erupt.  But the volcano had been dormant for 150 years.  So government officials and inhabitants of nearby towns did not take the warnings seriously.  On the evening of November 13, Nevado del Ruiz erupted, triggering catastrophic mudslides.  In the town of Armero, 23,000 people were buried alive in a matter of seconds.

For ninety percent of the last million years, the normal state of the Earth’s climate has been an ice age.  Ice ages last about 100,000 years, and are punctuated by short periods of warm climate, or interglacials.  The last ice age started about 114,000 years ago.  It began instantaneously.  For a hundred-thousand years, temperatures fell and sheets of ice a mile thick grew to envelop much of North America, Europe and Asia.  The ice age ended nearly as abruptly as it began.  Between about 12,000 and 10,000 years ago, the temperature in Greenland rose more than 50 �F.

The climate of the ice ages is documented in the ice layers of Greenland and Antarctica.  We have cored these layers, extracted them, and studied them in the laboratory.  Not only were ice ages colder than today, but the climates were considerably more variable.  Compared to the norm of the last million years, our climate is remarkably warm, stable and benign.  During the last ice age in Greenland abrupt climatic swings of 30F were common.  Since the ice age ended, variations of 3F are uncommon.

For thousands of years, people have learned from experience that cold temperatures are detrimental for human welfare and warm temperatures are beneficial.  From about 1300 to 1800 AD, the climate cooled slightly during a period known as the Little Ice Age.  In Greenland, the temperature fell by about 4F.  Although trivial, compared to an ice age cooling of 50F, this was nevertheless sufficient to wipe out the Viking colony there.

In northern Europe, the Little Ice Age kicked off with the Great Famine of 1315.  Crops failed due to cold temperatures and incessant rain.  Desperate and starving, parents ate their children, and people dug up corpses from graves for food.  In jails, inmates instantly set upon new prisoners and ate them alive. The Great Famine was followed by the Black Death, the greatest disaster ever to hit the human race.  One-third of the human race died; terror and anarchy prevailed. Human civilization as we know it is only possible in a warm interglacial climate.  Short of a catastrophic asteroid impact, the greatest threat to the human race is the onset of another ice age.

The oscillation between ice ages and interglacial periods is the dominant feature of Earth’s climate for the last million years.  But the computer models that predict significant global warming from carbon dioxide cannot reproduce these temperature changes.  This failure to reproduce the most significant aspect of terrestrial climate reveals an incomplete understanding of the climate system, if not a nearly complete ignorance. Global warming predictions by meteorologists are based on speculative, untested, and poorly constrained computer models.  But our knowledge of ice ages is based on a wide variety of reliable data, including cores from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.  In this case, it would be perspicacious to listen to the geologists, not the meteorologists.  By reducing our production of carbon dioxide, we risk hastening the advent of the next ice age.  Even more foolhardy and dangerous is the Obama administration’s announcement that they may try to cool the planet through geoengineering.  Such a move in the middle of a cooling trend could provoke the irreversible onset of an ice age.  It is not hyperbole to state that such a climatic change would mean the end of human civilization as we know it.

Earth’s climate is controlled by the Sun.  In comparison, every other factor is trivial.  The coldest part of the Little Ice Age during the latter half of the seventeenth century was marked by the nearly complete absence of sunspots.  And the Sun now appears to be entering a new period of quiescence.  August of 2008 was the first month since the year 1913 that no sunspots were observed.  As I write, the sun remains quiet.  We are in a cooling trend.  The areal extent of global sea ice is above the twenty-year mean. We have heard much of the dangers of global warming due to carbon dioxide.  But the potential danger of any potential anthropogenic warming is trivial compared to the risk of entering a new ice age.  Public policy decisions should be based on a realistic appraisal that takes both climate scenarios into consideration. Read full post here.

An international conference calling attention to widespread dissent to the asserted “consensus” on the causes, consequences, and proper responses to climate change.

The Third International Conference on Climate Change will be held in Washington, DC on June 2, 2009 at the Washington Court Hotel, 525 New Jersey Avenue NW. It will call attention to widespread dissent to the asserted “consensus” on various aspects of climate change and global warming.

The first conference, which took place in March 2008 in New York, dramatized the view that global warming is not a crisis, that it is probably natural and not caused by human activity, and that computer models are unreliable guides to future temperature change. The second conference, which took place in March 2009 in New York, focused on areas where alarmists have lost credibility and where skeptics have gained ground during the past year.

The purpose of the event is to expose Congressional staff and journalists to leading scientists and economists in the nation’s capital. Senators and Representatives will be invited to speak side-by-side with leading scientists and economists. Allied organizations have been invited to be cosponsors, to help supply speakers and promote the event to their members and supporters.

The conference’s theme will be “Climate Change: Scientific Debate and Economic Analysis.” The theme reflects the fact that the scientific debate is not over and that economic analysis is more important than ever, now that legislation is being seriously considered. The real science and economics of climate change support the view that global warming is not a crisis and that immediate action to reduce emissions is not necessary. This is, in fact, the emerging consensus view of scientists outside the IPCC and most economists outside environmental advocacy groups.

The complete program for the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change, including links to videos and PowerPoint presentations as they become available, is here. A copy of the printed program from the conference, which includes cosponsor information and brief biographies of all speakers, can be downloaded in Adobe�s PDF format here.

Click here for the full proceedings of the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change—including audio and video for more than 100 speakers.

Icecap still has 5 admission tickets available if you are in the DC area and would like to attend. E-mail me at jsdaleo@yahoo.com or jdaleo@icecap.us.

My response to the letter from Dr. Martin Parkinson, Secretary of the Australian Department of Climate Change, is available, along with this note, on my web site. Thanks to the many people who provided comments on my draft response, including Steve Hatfield-Dodds, a senior official within the Australian Department of Climate Change. I appreciate the willingness of the Australian government to engage in this discussion. I believe that you will find the final letter to be significantly improved over the draft version.

Several people admonished me for informal language, which detracts from credibility, and attempts at humor with an insulting tone (e.g., alligator shoes). They are right, of course - these should not be in the letter. So I reserve opinions with an edge to my covering e-mail note.

My frustration arises from the huge gap between words of governments, worldwide, and their actions or planned actions. It is easy to speak of a planet in peril. It is quite another to level with the public about what is needed, even if the actions are in everybody�s long-term interest. Instead governments are retreating to feckless “cap-and-trade”, a minor tweak to business-as-usual. Oil companies are so relieved to realize that they do not need to learn to be energy companies that they are decreasing their already trivial investments in renewable energy. They are using the money to buy greenwash advertisements. Perhaps if politicians and
businesses paint each other green, it will not seem so bad when our forests burn.

Cap-and-trade is the temple of doom. It would lock in disasters for our children and grandchildren. Why do people continue to worship a disastrous approach? Its fecklessness was proven by the Kyoto Protocol. It took a decade to implement the treaty, as countries extracted concessions that weakened even mild goals. Most countries that claim to have met their obligations actually increased their emissions. Others found that even modest reductions of emissions were inconvenient, and thus they simply ignored their goals.

Why is this cap-and-trade temple of doom worshipped? The 648 page cap-and-trade monstrosity that is being foisted on the U.S. Congress provides the answer. Not a single Congressperson has read it. They don’t need to - they just need to add more paragraphs to support their own special interests. By the way, the Congress people do not write most of those paragraphs - they are “suggested” by people in alligator shoes (lobbiests). Read more and the letter to Dr. Martin Parkinson, Secretary, Department of Climate Change, Government of Australia here.

See also Roger Pielke Jr.’s post on how Exxon Mobil’s CEO Rex Tillerson agrees with Hansen. 

That would be Karl Bohnak, chief meteorologist at WLUC-TV on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, who calls global warming alarmism his “pet peeve” and finally got so fed up with it that he wrote to his congressman, Democrat Rep. Bart Stupak. He shared his letter in a blog post on his station’s Web site:

For years as a broadcast meteorologist, I kept silent about the issue of “global warming.” Declaring skepticism labeled you (and still does) as an anti-environmentalist. After former VP Gore’s movie hit the big screen, I could remain silent no more.  “An Inconvenient Truth” was filled with so many gross distortions and outright scientific misrepresentations; I felt it was my obligation to speak out.

CO2 is not a pollutant and it’s not a problem.  The problem is rent-seeking corporations looking to cash in on cap and trade and low-output, high-cost alternative energy.  As your Michigan House colleague Congressman Dingell says “cap and trade is a tax, and it’s a great big one.” This is not the time to raise energy prices, which is what this bill will surely do.  I believe the majority of your constituents will suffer adversely if this legislation is passed.

After receiving Stupak’s standard constituent letter, Bohnak responded with some data that clarified some of the congressman’s misconceptions. Then Bohnak addresses readers of his blog, and specifically takes aim at his own industry - the media:

Note Congressman Stupak’s response on the issue of higher energy costs.  He states that he wants to make sure “unreasonable costs” are not passed on to consumers.  I ask, “What are unreasonable costs?” I do not want to pay ANY higher costs (reasonable or unreasonable) for a problem that just isn’t there.

I ask you to look at the data.  Don’t fall for the line that “An overwhelming majority of scientists agree that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are causing this unusual warming of our planet.” Majority rule is not how science is conducted.  If one wants to play that game, there’s a growing segment of scientists that have declared themselves “global warming skeptics.” Get as much information as you can, but you will NOT get it from the mainstream media (MSM).  The MSM is in the business of whipping up fear (look at the recent swine flu story).  Stories that the world is heading toward a precipice are right up its alley.  Also, there is at least one corporate media owner (My note, not Bohnak’s: this is General Electric, owner of NBC) that has a high stake in seeing this bill passed.

A subtly brave statement by Bohnak, considering his station/s network affiliation. Good for him. See Paul’s post here.

Australia’s prime minister discovers how much an emissions trading policy will cost.

It’s turning out that the biggest problem with carbon taxes is political reality. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has just announced he will delay implementing his trademark cap-and-trade emissions trading proposal until at least 2011. Mr. Rudd’s March proposal would have imposed total carbon permit costs (taxes) of 11.5 billion Australian dollars (US$8.5 billion) in the first two years, starting in 2010. This would have increased consumer prices by about 1.1% and shaved 0.1% off annual GDP growth until at least 2050, according to Australia’s Treasury. Support has fallen among business groups and individuals who earlier professed enthusiasm for Aussie cap and trade. Green gains were negligible; Australia accounts for only 1.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The reversal, or “backflip,” has caused Mr. Rudd much embarrassment. He may still push ahead with legislation in some form, as he promised when running in the 2007 election. But it’s becoming clear the proposal won’t be a shoo-in despite all the votes Mr. Rudd won when he campaigned as an anti-carbon apostle.

This is yet another example of politicians elsewhere cashing in politically on the current anti-carbon enthusiasm, only to discover that support diminishes as the real-world costs become clear. See more here.

And in the AAP, they report Australian Opposition Opposes Cap-and-Trade in Any Form

THE Nationals remain totally opposed to an emissions trading scheme (ETS) even though its Coalition partner says it’ll consider supporting the federal Government’s plan when it comes up in the Senate. Nationals leader in the Senate Barnaby Joyce confirmed the party’s stand on the ETS in an address to the National Press Club in Canberra today. “The National party has stated its position. If you go forward with the emissions trading scheme that they’ve just put forward, the answer’s no.”

Senator Joyce said the Nationals would not support an ETS in any form. “No, no, no, no, no,’’ he said. The only benefactors from the scheme would be the “wonderful’’ people in stockbroking houses, he said, while producers, including miners and farmers, would ultimately go out of business due to the plan’s excessive costs. “We’re making those who don’t pass any export dollars wealthy and making those who do make us export dollars broke,’’ he said.

Senator Joyce said the Rudd Government had, in the middle of a global recession, come up with a policy to make a bad situation worse. 

Brad Johnson on Climate Progress reported: Because of a climate disaster, global warming skeptic Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) has been forced to cancel her attendance at the White House Correspondents� Dinner. The Wall Street Journal reports that an “unusually warm spring thaw in Alaska is causing some of the state’s worst flooding in decades, with rising rivers wiping out an entire village and bombarding another town with ice chunks as big as houses”.

The floods resulted from “a rare combination of unusually heavy winter snow and a spring warm-up over the past week that saw temperatures soar into the 70s - a good 20 degrees higher than normal for this time of year.”

There indeed was heavy snow in Alaska with both 2007 and 2008 recorded in the top ten snowiest in many locations. It has been unusually cold for much of the time the last two years, thanks to the cooling from the cool PDO that has developed strongly. It produces a step ladder change in temperatures - up diuring the warm PDO and down in the cold.

Recall the Alaskan glaciers advanced for the first time in 250 years.

Cap & Trade is rearing its ugly head again, this time its being called The American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES). President Obama revealed it on earth day April 22, 2009, and its got all of the usual suspects including Al Gore and Goldman Sachs, and they stand to make billions off this tax.

They are trying to push through a very serious, very burdensome carbon tax. Fashioned after the Enron model, a new derivatives bubble that could easily reach $700 billion per year! . Plus there is in fact no scientific consensus on the issue, no matter how hard Al Gore tries to tell us there is.

ACES promotes renewable energy, carbon capture and sequestration, low-carbon fuels, electric vehicles, and smart grids; increasing energy efficiency in buildings, appliances, transportation, and industry. Plus it is supposed to create millions of new jobs, in fact a whole new “Green” economy. And oh yeah… stop global warming.

It Sounds To Good To Good To Be True!

Like most Ponzi Schemes if it sounds to good to be true, it probably is. Because the way they want to achieve these goals is through carbon offsets, remember Enron?  In general, under cap and trade, the amount of carbon that energy producers emit is capped. They can exceed that cap through the purchase, i.e., “trade,” of carbon permits. The money for those permits would be collected by the government and presumably redistributed under a system still being crafted.

“The reality is the cap-and-trade legislation offered by the Democrats amounts to an economic declaration of war on the Midwest by liberals on Capitol Hill,” Chairman of the House Republican Conference Mike Pence (R-Ind.) told CNSNews.com. “We are going to increase costs on every American with this plan—and the other thing we need to keep in mind is the millions of American jobs we are going to put at risk if we impose this new tax on American industry when our competitors around the world will not,” House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told CNSNews.com in a press conference on Thursday. “It’s pretty clear.” Both Pence and Boehner have said they estimate that, in total, the Democrats’ cap-and-trade legislation could cost each American family up to $3,100 a year.

Chairman Emeritus of Energy and Commerce Committee, John Dingell (D-MI), calls cap and trade as it is: Nobody in this country realizes that cap and trade is a tax, and its a great big one.

See full size youtube quote here.

Also Ralph Nader on climate bill: “It’s not going to work. It’s too complex. It’s too easily manipulated politically” May 11, 2009 New York Times GreenInc. Blog.

Excerpt: Question: So what’s your reaction to the Waxman-Markey climate bill now on the table, which calls for cap-and-trade?  - Nader: I’m really astonished, because I would have thought they would have gone for a carbon tax. I mean, it’s not going to work. It’s too complex. It’s too easily manipulated politically. Right now, they’re having a battle over whether they can even auction the credits off for money. The industry doesn’t want auctions for money. So, they’re already having a battle right from the takeoff. I have to call Markey and see why did he ever buy into that.” See more here. H/T Climate Depot.

See larger image here courtesy Heritage.org

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Also now available some items that will gore your alarmist friends (part of the proceeds go to support Icecap):

See full size display here.

And “My carbon footprints are bigger than yours and plants love me for it” items here and here