Oh Mann… this can’t be good. Called a ‘charlatan’ and his gubernatorial pick linked to Solyndra in the same day!

Oh Mann… this can’t be good. Called a ‘charlatan’ and his gubernatorial pick linked to Solyndra in the same day!

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/07/oh-mann-this-cant-be-good-called-a-charlatan-and-his-gubernatorial-pick-linked-to-solyndra-in-the-same-day

… But the situation is more delicate for those who gained their notoriety, made their reputations, and received their government funding on the old “sky is falling” model. For them acknowledging new facts means admitting the major possibility they were wrong. This includes conceding policy prescriptions based on their work may be draconian, counterproductive, and […]…

‘Tornado season close to quietest ever despite the two F-5s in Oklahoma’

Tornado season close to quietest ever despite the two F-5s in Oklahoma

http://www.icecap.us

TWC sadly did a story interviewing Jeff Masters of their affiliate Weather Underground (named after an Bill Ayers radical left organization founded on the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan, where Jeff’s Weather Underground was founded) claiming warming is occurring at a rate ten times any time in history. As we have shown numerous times, that is only in the manipulated data from NOAA/NASA. Record highs in long term 90 year + stations, show what Hansen observed in 1999 before the heavy duty manipulation started, that the 1930s was by far the warmest decade.

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The media and some at NOAA continue to pretend and hype that extreme weather is at unprecedented levels, out global hurricane activity is at 30+ year lows, the summer has been wetter and cooler (many more record lows than highs) with a shrinking drought (hard to do in summer). And in the US, the number of tornadoes is within 14 of the lowest ever recorded year to date.

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My meteorologist buddy BK sent this video yesterday on the Moore tornado. He comments “This is the most dramatic one I have seen yet, at least from a documentation standpoint.  It’s long, but it didn’t seem that way b/c I was mesmerized and in awe most of the time. His dialogue is excellent.  No yelling or wild, silly statements.  He gets really choked up around 13:20.  After that is quite dramatic as he is driving through the damage path running right behind the tornado.  Around 8:15 he gets caught in a violent RFD suddenly, even though it appears he was not too close.  He catches the tornado right from genesis, and as you can see, it had relatively modest start (for a tornado anyways)—classic narrow funnel.  It quickly turns into a elephant trunk, then cylinder, and then into a monster wedge.”

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New paper finds NH ice ages explained even with constant levels of CO2: ‘A paper published in Nature finds that ice ages in the Northern Hemisphere can be explained by Milankovitch cycles and the unique geography of the North American ice sheet’

New paper finds NH ice ages explained even with constant levels of CO2

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/08/new-paper-finds-nh-ice-ages-explained.html

A paper published today in Nature finds that ice ages in the Northern Hemisphere can be explained by Milankovitch cycles and the unique geography of the North American ice sheet, finding, “the crucial mechanism for the 100,000 year cycles is the delayed glacial isostatic rebound which keeps the ice elevation low, and, therefore,  the ice ablation high, while the ice sheet retreats.” The authors are able to reproduce the saw-tooth pattern of ice ages using a model that assumes a constant level of atmospheric CO2. The prior ‘consensus’ was that Milankovitch cycles and CO2 were the primary drivers of ice age cycles, but this paper finds CO2 played a minor role, stating, “Carbon dioxide is involved, but is not determinative, in the evolution of the 100,000-year glacial cycles.” Still unexplained, however, is that ice ages were approximately synchronous between the Northern and Southern hemispheres, even though by Milankovitch theory an increase in solar radiation in the Northern Hemisphere is offset by an equal decrease of solar radiation in the Southern Hemisphere.

Excerpts:

The 100-kyr periodicity, the sawtooth pattern and the timing of the terminations are reproduced with constant CO2 levels 20,24 (for example  220 p.p.m.; Fig. 1e), and are robust for a range of model parameters (Supplementary Fig. 4).

By contrast, the spectral peak of ,100-kyr cycles is greatly reduced,  and permanent large ice sheets remain, with the imposition of instantaneous isostatic rebound (Fig. 1f). This result supports the idea that the  crucial mechanism for the 100-kyr cycles is the delayed glacial isostatic rebound 14,15, which keeps the ice elevation low, and, therefore,  the ice ablation high, while the ice sheet retreats. We note, however,  that CO2 variations can result in amplification of the full magnitude of ice-volume changes during the 100-kyr cycles, but do not drive the cycles. Ice-sheet changes may induce variations in CO2 through changing sea surface temperature, affecting the solubility of CO2 (ref. 25), and through changing sea level, affecting the stratification of and CO2 storage in the Southern Ocean18. During deglaciation, the melt water may affect ocean circulation, leading to an increase in atmospheric  CO2 (refs 23, 26, 27).

A remarkable conclusion from our model results is therefore that  the 100,000 year glacial cycle exists only because of the unique geographic  and climatological setting of the North American ice sheet with …

Watch Now: Climate Depot’s Morano on Fox News in Electric Car Debate: ‘In Europe, the UK and Ireland have more charging station than cars…Consumers do not want them’

Fox Business News: ‘Money with Melissa Francis’ — August 6, 2013 — Watch here

Background Info: U.S. not into electric cars, but feds gave company $100M for charging stations, watchdog says 

Related Links: 

Ireland: Just 121 new electric cars registered as charging points outnumber vehicles — ‘The ESB has committed to maintaining 1,500 public charging points and making 2,000 home charging points available’ 

Flat battery: Government reveals there are more charging points than electric cars in UK as sales slump: ‘Sales of electric cars have slumped so badly that there are now more charging points than vehicles on the road. Just 2,149 electric cars have been sold since 2006, despite a government scheme last year offering customers up to £5,000 towards the cost of a vehicle. The Department for Transport says that around 2,500 charging points have been installed’

Climate Depot’s report: Electric/Hybrid car industry loses power in the face of market reality and lack of consumer demand

Washington Post on Chevy Volt: ‘The basic theory- if you build them, customers will come – was a myth. And an expensive one, at that’

Watch Now: Climate Depot’s Morano on Fox with Neil Cavuto on Electric Cars and the War on Coal: ‘The avg. household can increase their electric load 50% (when charging electric cars)

Watch Now: Climate Depot’s Morano on Fox News on fed tax dollars to electric cars: ‘The old adage about ‘Who killed the electric car?’ – while I think Energy Sec. Chu killed the electric car’ 

Morano on Tesla electric cars and CEO Elon Musk: ‘That is what we are finding, model after model, across the board, the consumers are not interested…Tesla reported sales 30% below expectations…Lost $660 million over 14 quarters…CEO Elon Musk is driven by fear of Co2, worrying that it will destroy large parts of the earth. He’s an ideologue. This guy is worth $2 billion.’

Polar bear expert ridicules latest media claims as ‘animal tragedy porn’ — Ian Stirling’s latest howler: ‘the polar bear who died of climate change’ — Suggests they ‘knew this bear was going to die back in April when they captured him – they simply waited, with a photographer on hand, until he died. It was an orchestrated photo-op’

Ian Stirling’s latest howler: “the polar bear who died of climate change”

http://polarbearscience.com/2013/08/07/ian-stirlings-latest-howler-the-polar-bear-who-died-of-climate-change

Will wildlife biologist and Polar Bear Specialist Group member Ian Stirling now say anything – no matter how unscientific – to garner more sympathy and media attention for polar bears? It appears so.
A tabloid-style picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words article appeared in the environment section of the UK newspaper The Guardian yesterday (August 6, 2013) with a picture of a dead polar bear meant to wring your heart. The picture is a vehicle for statements from Ian Stirling and others that this polar bear died from climate change. A longer article was alongside.
The caption below the photo of a dead polar bear (animal tragedy porn) is this:
“This 16-year-old male polar bear died of starvation resulting from the lack of ice on which to hunt seals, according to Dr Ian Stirling.”
Many folks have been asking questions about this and so have I.
I suggest this is what really happened: the polar bear biologists working in Svalbard earlier this year knew this bear was going to die back in April when they captured him – they simply waited, with a photographer on hand, until he died. It was an orchestrated photo-op.
What the newspapers said:
Ian Stirling is quoted extensively in the short Guardian piece explaining the circumstances of the dead polar bear:
“Dr Ian Stirling, now at Polar Bears International, said the bear had been in apparently good health when it was examined by scientists in April in southern Svalbard. It was found dead three months later [July] in northern Svalbard, far from its normal range. Stirling said most of the fjords in Svalbard did not freeze normally last winter, driving the bear further afield in the hunt for food. From his lying position in death, Stirling said, the bear appears to simply have starved and died where he dropped, having been reduced to little more than skin and bone.”
From the longer Guardian piece:
“The bear had been examined by scientists from the Norwegian Polar Institute in April in the southern part of Svalbard, an Arctic island archipelago, and appeared healthy. The same bear had been captured in the same area in previous years, suggesting that the discovery of its body, 250km away in northern Svalbard in July, represented an unusual movement away from its normal range. The bear probably followed the fjords inland as it trekked …

New paper finds Antarctic sea ice retreated during the 1940’s when CO2 was ‘safe’ & not since — Published in Quaternary Science Reviews

New paper finds Antarctic sea ice retreated during the 1940’s when CO2 was ‘safe’ & not since

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/08/new-paper-finds-antarctic-sea-ice.html

A new paper published in Quaternary Science Reviews reconstructs sea ice changes around the Antarctic Peninsula from 1860-2000 and finds “abrupt changes between 1935 and 1950, marked by ocean warming and sea ice retreat in both sides of the Antarctic Peninsula.” However, the authors find that from 1950-2000 there was no trend in sea ice extent, stating, “Since 1950, inferred environmental conditions do not provide evidence for any trend related to the recent warming”. Satellite data, available since 1979, shows Antarctic sea ice is currently at record highs, 900,000 square kilometers above the 1979-2008 average. If man-made CO2 emissions had anything to do with Antarctic sea ice, the opposite pattern would have been observed over the past 153 years.

Notes: Global sea ice is also currently above the 1979-2008 mean. The Antarctic Peninsula is falsely claimed to be one of the most rapidly warming regions on Earth.

Satellite data for Antarctic sea ice extent

Diatoms and biomarkers evidence for major changes in sea ice conditions prior the instrumental period in Antarctic Peninsula

Loïc Barbaraa, b, , , 
Xavier Crostaa, 
Sabine Schmidta, 
Guillaume Masséb, c

a Université Bordeaux, EPOC, UMR 5805, F-33400 Talence, France
b UMR-CNRS 7159 LOCEAN, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris VI, Jussieu, 75252 Paris Cedex 05, France
c UMI 3376 TAKUVIK, CNRS & Université Laval, 1045 Avenue de la Médecine, G1V 0A6 Québec, Canada

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2013.07.021

 

Abstract

The Antarctic Peninsula (AP) has been identified as one of the most rapidly warming region on Earth. Satellite monitoring currently allows for a detailed understanding of the relationship between sea ice extent and duration and atmospheric and oceanic circulations in this region. However, our knowledge on ocean–ice–atmosphere interactions is still relatively poor for the period extending beyond the last 30 years. Here, we describe environmental conditions in Northwestern and Northeastern Antarctic Peninsula areas over the last century using diatom census counts and diatom specific biomarkers (HBIs) in two marine sediment multicores (MTC-38C and -18A, respectively). Diatom census counts and HBIs show abrupt changes between 1935 and 1950, marked by ocean warming and sea ice retreat in both sides of the AP. Since 1950, inferred environmental conditions do not provide evidence for any trend related to the recent warming but demonstrate a pronounced variability on pluri-annual to decadal time scale. We propose that multi-decadal …

Lots of questions about that ‘starved’ 16-year-old polar bear: ‘If it was healthy in April, can we just assume ‘from its lying position’ that CO2 reduced it to skin and bones by July?’

Lots of questions about that “starved” 16-year-old polar bear

http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2013/08/lots-of-questions-about-that-16-year.html

If it was healthy in April, can we just assume “from its lying position” that CO2 reduced it to skin and bones by July?  What about the admission that “there may have been some underlying disease”–did anyone actually check?  What did its teeth look like?  How big a factor was old age?  If pregnant female polar bears in Hudson Bay can fast for up to 8 months, how did CO2 cause this particular bear to starve so quickly?After Ian Stirling found the animal dead in July, how did global warming activist photographer Ashley Cooper end up at the scene?  What was the process of hyping this dead bear to the media?  Didn’t thousands of polar bears end up looking like this well before the invention of the internal combustion engine?Starved polar bear perished due to record sea-ice melt, says expert | Environment | The GuardianIce loss due to climate change is “absolutely, categorically and without question” the cause of falling polar bear populations, said Richardson, who cares for the UK’s only publicly kept polar bears. He said 16 years was not particularly old for a wild male polar bear, which usually live into their early 20s [or 15-18, who’s counting?]. “There may have been some underlying disease, but I would be surprised if this was anything other than starvation,” he said. “Once polar bears reach adulthood they are normally nigh on indestructible, they are hard as nails.”  A victim of climate change? Polar bear found starved to death looked ‘like a rug’ – World NewsIan Stirling, who has studied polar bears for nearly 40 years, told The Guardian newspaper that he found the animal on Svalbard in July. “From his lying position in death the bear appears to simply have starved and died where he dropped,” Stirling said. “He had no external suggestion of any remaining fat, having been reduced to little more than skin and bone.”The bear was examined by Norwegian scientists in April about 150 miles south and seemed to be healthy at that time…Ashley Cooper, the photographer who took the picture, said the sight of the dead polar bear was “desperately sad.”…Cooper said the fate of the bear was “what [all] polar bears have got to look forward to over the next 10 to 20 years.”“There isn’t a future for them unless we can very rapidly get …

Prize-winning climate communicator Gavin Schmidt: He’s *totally* open to discussing climate science, unless the discussion involves someone who disagrees with him

Prize-winning climate communicator Gavin Schmidt: He’s *totally* open to discussing climate science, unless the discussion involves someone who disagrees with him

http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2013/08/prize-winning-climate-communicator.html

Twitter / ClimateOfGavin… In my own advocacy I try and match up to that ideal. I advocate for a higher level of conversation about the science and greater awarenessTwitter / ClimateOfGavinA couple of thoughts post google hangout… 1) advocacy for an opening up of dialogue is a totally valid positionFlashback: Don’t miss this “completely absurd ballet” as award-winning climate communicator Gavin Schmidt is afraid to discuss global warming on-camera with Roy Spencer[Bishop Hill] unfortunately Gavin is refusing to appear alongside Roy. Roy is therefore forced to pirouette off, stage left. Gavin enters and performs his pas de deux with Stossel, with much rolling of the eyes and bras croisé. After Gavin has pliéd and demi detournéd a little, Roy is invited to respond, but Gavin is still playing hard to get: he in turn makes a grand battement and flounces off into the wings, to be replaced by a slight amused looking Roy.…