Listen Now: Climatologist Dr. Patrick Michaels on Global Warming and the IPCC

On this episode of Power Hour, Alex Epstein talks with Dr. Patrick Michaels about global warming and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Dr. Michaels is Director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute. He taught Environmental Science for 30 years at University of Virginia. He is a past President of the American Association of State Climatologists, and former Program Chair of the Committee on Applied Climatology of the American Meteorological Society. A former contributing author to the IPCC, he is an outspoken critic of the organization’s politicization of science. – See more at: http://industrialprogress.com/2013/10/11/power-hour-patrick-michaels-on-global-warming-and-the-ipcc/#sthash.GzxR0m5U.dpuf…

New paper finds no evidence of AGW in West Antarctica — Published in Geophysical Research Letters

New paper finds no evidence of AGW in West Antarctica

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/10/new-paper-finds-no-evidence-of-agw-in.html

A paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters finds no evidence of anthropogenic climate change in West Antarctica over the past ~300 years. The paper debunks prior claims that West Antarctica is one of the fastest warming regions on the planet and instead finds more warming “occurred in the mid-19th and 18th centuries, suggesting that at present the effect of anthropogenic climate drivers at this location has not exceeded the natural range of climate variability in the context of the past ~300 years.”A 308-year record of climate variability in West AntarcticaElizabeth R Thomas 1,*, Thomas J Bracegirdle 1, John Turner 1, Eric W Wolff 2DOI: 10.1002/2013GL057782

We present a new stable isotope record from Ellsworth Land which provides a valuable 308-year record (1702-2009) of climate variability from coastal West Antarctica. Climate variability at this site is strongly forced by sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and atmospheric pressure in the tropical Pacific and related to local sea ice conditions. The record shows that this region has warmed since the late 1950s, at a similar magnitude to that observed in the Antarctic Peninsula and central West Antarctica, however, this warming trend is not unique. More dramatic isotopic warming (and cooling) trends occurred in the mid-19th and 18th centuries, suggesting that at present the effect of anthropogenic climate drivers at this location has not exceeded the natural range of climate variability in the context of the past ~300 years.

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New paper finds SW Pacific Ocean surface temperatures were about the same as today, ~200,000 years ago — Published in Quaternary Research

New paper finds SW Pacific Ocean surface temperatures were about the same as today, ~200,000 years ago

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/10/new-paper-finds-sw-pacific-ocean.html

A new paper published in Quaternary Research finds sea surface temperatures in the SW Pacific Ocean were about the same as the present 200,000 years ago. According to the authors, “Statistical results suggest that annual averages of sea-surface temperature (SST) and salinity (SSS) at ~ 197,000 [years ago] were not significantly different from and ~ 1.2 higher than at present, respectively.”The authors also find sea levels in the SW Pacific were up to ~10 meters [~32 feet] higher than the present during the last interglacial ~120,000 years ago.

Horizontal axis is thousands of years before the present

MIS 7 interglacial sea-surface temperature and salinity reconstructions from a southwestern subtropical Pacific coral

Ryuji Asamia, b, , , 
Yasufumi Iryuc, d, 
Kimio Hanawae, 
Takashi Miwad, 
Peter Holdenf, 
Ryuichi Shinjob,
Gustav Paulayg

a Trans-disciplinary Research Organization for Subtropical Island Studies (TRO-SIS), University of the Ryukyus, 1 Senbaru, Nishihara, Okinawa 903-0213, Japan
b Faculty of Science, Department of Physics and Earth Sciences, University of the Ryukyus, 1 Senbaru, Nishihara, Okinawa 903-0213, Japan
c Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University, Nagoya 464-8601, Japan
d Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University, 6-3 Aramaki-aza-Aoba, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8578, Japan
e Physical Oceanography Laboratory, Department of Geophysics, Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University, 6-3 Aramaki-aza-Aoba, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8578, Japan
f Research School of Earth Sciences, The Australian National University, Bldg 61, Mills Road, Acton, ACT 0200, Australia
g Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA

We generated a 5.5-yr snapshot of biweekly-to-monthly resolved time series of carbon and oxygen isotope composition (δ13C and δ18O) and Sr/Ca and Mg/Ca from annually banded aragonite skeleton of a ~ 197 ka pristine Porites coral collected at Niue Island (19°00′S, 169°50′W) in the southwestern subtropical Pacific Ocean. This report is the first of a high-resolution coral-based paleoclimate archive during the Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 7 interglacial. Statistical results suggest that annual averages of sea-surface temperature (SST) and salinity (SSS) at ~ 197 ka were not significantly different from and ~ 1.2 higher than at present, respectively. Monthly mean variations showed increased SSS at ~ 197 ka that was higher (1.4–1.9 relative to today) in the austral summer than in the austral winter. Monthly SST and SSS anomalies at …

Scafetta 2013: Simple solar astronomical model beats IPCC climate models

Scafetta 2013: Simple solar astronomical model beats IPCC climate models

http://joannenova.com.au/2013/10/scafetta-2013-simple-solar-astronomical-model-beats-ipcc-climate-models/

Nicola Scafetta has a new paper (in long line of papers) on a semi-empirical model which has a better fit than Global Circulation Models (CGM) favored by the IPCC. We ought be careful not to read too much into it, but nor to ignore the message in it about the grand failure of the GCM’s. Scafetta used Fourier analysis to find six cycles, then uses those six cycles to produce a climate model he runs for as long as 2000 years which seems to match the best multiproxies. In terms of discovering the absolute truth about the climate, this is not an end-point way to use Fourier analysis, as it is just “curve fitting”. With six flexible cycle frequencies (plus amplitude and phase) there are 18 tuneable parameters, more than enough to model any wiggly line on a graph, and there are scores of astronomical cycles to pick from. But Scafetta’s work suggests it’s madness not to pay attention to astronomical cycles, and points to major flaws in the IPCC simulations. Compare the two types of models: Scafetta’s simple model assumes there are natural cycles (a pretty reasonable assumption) but curve fits to produce predictions. The unverified IPCC models assume […]Rating: 8.8/10 (14 votes cast)

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Analysis: Gross Scientific Negligence – IPCC Ignored Huge Body Of Peer-Reviewed Literature Showing Sun’s Clear Impact

Gross Scientific Negligence – IPCC Ignored Huge Body Of Peer-Reviewed Literature Showing Sun’s Clear Impact

http://notrickszone.com/2013/10/11/gross-scientific-negligence-ipcc-ignored-huge-body-of-peer-reviewed-literature-showing-suns-clear-impact/

Proven by thousands of temperature datasets, the earth’s climate fluctuated cyclically in the past, and there’s an overwhelming body of evidence showing a close correlation with solar activity and other powerful natural factors. If the IPCC had truly examined past temperature developments and compared them to solar data, they’d have seen there is something remarkable there.
Yet in the IPCC AR5, Working Group 1 takes only a cursory look at solar activity and its possible impacts on climate in IPCC AR5 before simply dismissing the sun altogether. The Earth’s sole supplier of energy, the sun, and all its dynamism, in fact gets only a couple of pages in a 2200-page report, about 0.1%. That alone is a monumental scandal. It’s incompetence and negligence on the grandest of scales.
This will certainly go down in the books as one of the greatest scientific debacles of human history.
If the IPCC had directed the same energy and resources to make the sun and natural factors the culprit for climate change as it has with CO2, they’d certainly have a far more convincing case today,and many of the questions it claims are still open would be closed. But obviously the IPCC’s sole intent is to frame mankind and its CO2 emissions as the culprit for something that stopped happening 16 years ago. This is fraud, not science.
The IPCC took the same negligent approach with sea levels: dismissing non-alarmist science in favor of nutty, doomsday scenarios.
I spent half a day searching for papers that provide evidence of a significant impact on climate by the sun and natural factors, and another full day sorting through them. I limited the scope of the search to 2008 – 2012, i.e. papers since the last IPCC report. There are many more papers of course prior to 2008.
What follows is a list of papers I found in just a few hours that the IPCC should have taken a much closer look at instead of just dismissing. The list of course is not complete.
An excellent resource that really speeded things up was the site:
Popular Technology.net
Popular technology is actually a list of 1100 papers that the IPCC wishes did not exist.
For some of the papers I’ve included links to additional information and some important quotes. Unfortunately I was …

Washington Post warmist Michael Gerson: “Time scales that environmental advocates once touted as significant are now dismissed as irrelevant”

Washington Post warmist Michael Gerson: “Time scales that environmental advocates once touted as significant are now dismissed as irrelevant”

http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2013/10/washington-post-warmist-michael-gerson.html

Michael Gerson: Politics is poorly suited to respond to climate change – The Washington PostThe intersection of science and policy, of climate and politics, has become a bloody crossroads. Blog-based arguments over ocean temperatures and the thickness of the Greenland ice sheet are as shrill and personal as any tea-party primary challenge….Environmental advocates have done their side no favors. The most eager have been caught in a sleight of hand. In the past, they used relatively brief periods of warming and short-term weather patterns to bolster their arguments about climate disruption — a tactic that has come back to bite them in the El Niño. Recent warming has been slower than the long-term trend — what has been called a “pause” or “hiatus.” Time scales that environmental advocates once touted as significant are now dismissed as irrelevant. Skeptics have cried gotcha….We could leave most of the vast reserves of fossil fuels in the ground — a political and economic impossibility — and still the ice would melt and the seas would rise.

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Cook’s 97% consensus claim: standing on its last legs

Cook’s consensus: standing on its last legs

http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/10/11/cooks-consensus-standing-on-its-last-legs.html

A bird reserve hires a fresh enthusiast and puts him to do a census. The amateur knows there are 3 kinds of birds in the park. He accompanies an experienced watcher. The watcher counts 6 magpies, 4 ravens and 2 starlings. The new hire gets 6 magpies, 3 ravens and 3 starlings. Great job, right?
No, and here’s how. The new person was not good at identification. He mistook every bird for everything else. He got his total the same as the expert but by chance.
If one looks just at aggregates, one can be fooled into thinking the agreement between birders to be an impressive 92%. In truth, the match is abysmal: 25%. Interestingly this won’t come out unless the raw data is examined.
Suppose, that instead of three kinds of birds there were seven, and that there are a thousand of them instead of twelve. This is the exact situation with the Cook consensus paper.
The Cook paper attempts validation by comparing own ratings with ratings from papers’ authors (see table 4 in paper). In characteristic fashion Cook’s group report only that authors found the same 97% as they did. Except this agreement is solely of the totals – an entirely meaningless figure
Turn back to the bird example. The new person is sufficiently wrong (in 9 of 12 instances) that one cannot be sure even the matches with the expert (3 of 12) aren’t by chance. You can get all birds wrong and yet match 100% with the expert. The per-observation concordance rate is what determines validity.…

James Delingpole: ‘The Climate Alarmists Have Lost the Debate’

James Delingpole: ‘The Climate Alarmists Have Lost the Debate’

http://www.nationalreview.com/planet-gore/361000/james-delingpole-climate-alarmists-have-lost-debate-greg-pollowitz

Good stuff from Delingpole over at the Telegraph:The story so far: with the release of its Fifth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has proved beyond reasonable doubt that it cannot be taken seriously.Here are a few reasons why: IPCC lead author Dr Richard Lindzen has accused it of having “sunk to a level of hilarious incoherence.” Nigel Lawson has called it “not science but mumbo jumbo”. The Global Warming Policy Foundation’s Dr David Whitehouse has described the IPCC’s panel as “evasive and inaccurate” in the way it tried dodge the key issue of the 15-year (at least) Read More ……

Judith Curry study: Global warming stop could last into 2030s

Judith Curry study: Global warming stop could last into 2030s

http://junkscience.com/2013/10/10/judith-curry-study-global-warming-stop-could-last-into-2030s/

Science2.0 reports: A new paper published in the journal Climate Dynamics suggests that this ‘unpredictable climate variability’ behaves in a more predictable way than previously assumed. The paper’s authors, Marcia Wyatt and Judith Curry, point to the so-called ‘stadium-wave’ signal that propagates like the cheer at sporting events whereby sections of sports fans seated in […]…