All our storms are now termed "record setters" and then we come to find out it is the fifth lowest pressure or tenth deepest snowcover... I ask, "Where's the record?" Answer: "There isn't one!" It just makes for attractive segues and keeps the viewer tuned in to be told the news their hearing about has set a record of some sort.

Edit addition: Three months post event, the "SuperStorm Sandy", which did much damage to the NJ, NY and CT areas, has been downgraded to not having been even a Hurricane when it came ashore! We won't hear the news of that going on for weeks like we did when it was considered a Hurricane. Nor'easter Nemo was stated to be the worst of that type ever and now it's known that mid-century, fifty years ago, there were a series of Nor'easters that were more devastating and dumped in the range of 3-4 ft of the white stuff. Nemo mostly only dropped 2 ft. A record Nor'easter? Hardly.

Even I was caught by surprise by this one, but looking back logically it isn't surprising at all. Last century the sea level rose 1.7mm a year on average (7 inches a century) which is not enough to register on any level of significance. Then it's meant to have reached 3.1mm a year (still under a foot a century), but the satellites which generated this result have been questioned for being calibrated wrongly and reading the same amount too high. Now the NOAA, the US national organisation collecting the measurements directly through tide gauges have actually found the rise has fallen to 0.7mm a year since 2000, almost guaranteeing the satellites to be bogus as it's a darn sight easier to use a tide gauge and check it manually than go up and check every single satellite.

Tide gauge measurements

Now logically this makes perfect sense. We've had no warming in the 21st century, so as ice can't melt (50% of the cause) or sea expand without a rise, it's physically impossible for the sea levels to rise without a rise in temperature. In most organisations besides the mafia such inconsistencies would cause immediate suspensions of the satellite measurements until the problems were checked and sorted out, but even though they are partly shared by the same organisation, all they have done is make the sort of excuses for the difference a child would for losing their homework. Even the general public aren't that stupid had the papers taken the effort to let them know. A five times exaggeration of such vital measurements (Tuvalu has applied for billions of aid as they claim it's going underwater) is something unseen before in science outside the climate (glaciers would be gone by 2035, no sorry, that should have been 2350, and the Himalayan glaciers lost 40 billion tons of ice per year, oh no, sorry, they didn't lose any), but getting an entire sea level wrong for over a decade has easily outdone every single ricket since the hockey stick was invented.

Having by far the best resources in space I tend to hope people will trust the direct (as opposed to inferred) findings of NASA, and they have appeared to find the only cause of 'dangerous' warming (ie that which would amplify CO2) to not only be absent, but actually fallen dramatically. This is the upper atmosphere, where CO2 both fills in the spaces in the air which would otherwise let the heat through, and the major (almost total) cause of amplification, the water evaporating from the oceans, would have to lodge to cause it.

It is the upper atmosphere which is meant to act as the main barrier to outgoing heat, and the area the CO2, water vapour and heat would all end up, doubling or way more the 1C from doubling CO2, albeit beyond our capacity to ever know. These satellites began in 1979 with basic temperature measurements, and have slowly been increased to measure many other parameters, and this is nowhere near the first to totally contradict their models. Secondly the greatest unknown was the negative feedback from oceanic evaporation, the effect on cloud cover. Total cloud cover (ie water vapour in the lower atmosphere) is a cooling effect as it creates shade, and blocks the incoming heat by reflecting it back to space. There is no current knowledge on the amount of increased evaporation can have on cloud cover simply as that is admitted to be beyond even their best algorithms, and can only observe to draw any conclusions, which technically ought to apply across the climate board.

Now NASA's direct observations have shown the official line, that CO2 and water vapour collect in the upper atmosphere, greatly increasing the weak power of CO2 alone, to be redundant. I said long ago the small rise in temperature after a 50% increase was more than enough to see the absence of feedback, simply because it was expected to be steady and besides a small potential for retention of heat in the oceans (which can also be measured and is not there either) the vapour has to evaporate and stay in the upper atmosphere to have any effect whatsoever, and has now been shown not to. And with no feedback there is no global warming, yes, it's really that simple. CO2 would need to be over 1000ppm just to reach 2C, where the benefits of warming (all in the IPCC report, not my own imagination) are balanced by possible problems. It would then need 2000ppm to reach 3C which isn't even possible and would take a thousand years even if it was.

Read it here

It gets pretty technical after that but doesn't affect the bottom line and for anyone qualified is fairly conclusive that's what needs to happen and if it isn't then it probably never can.

Here's a little calm in a sea of chaos

Correlation between natural cycles and temperature

Looking at not the first similar diagram, any warming can be seen to be clearly consistent with a far longer and fully natural trend for over 200 years.

Modern technology now means unlike verbal or written communication, electronic means leave traces all over the system and can be retrieved by equipped individuals just like fingerprints at a crime scene. Now there's absolutely no need to accuse anyone of cheating and not be believed if they are happy to admit it among themselves thinking no one else will ever see it.

But we have now:

Phil Jones and Michael Mann compete for the gold medal in cheating.
---------------------------------

date: Tue Aug 31 11:17:33 2004
from: Phil Jones
subject: Fwd: On the Role of Statistics in Climate Research, Tim Lambert, Phil Jones et al?
to: Rasmus Benestad
Rasmus and Mike,
…
In the email below, Mike seems to have won the gold medal for statistical abuse and I have the silver. I seemed to have tried too hard to explain my techniques. I tried really hard to get the gold medal – Mike has a degree in maths/stats ! I’ll have to redeem myself in AR4 and switch the places for the 2008 Olympiad – the AR4 coming out in 2007 should put me well in the lead.
I clearly didn’t allow for the knowledge of the judges – I think I’ll appeal!
…
Cheers
Phil

---------------------------------
Michael Mann created global warming personally by altering the 20th century temperatures to form a hockey stick although many others could not demonstrate them. Phil Jones runs the university department which provides the data to much of the UN, so besides these being the main players in climate science (sic) they were not actually joking as they weren't saying it to entertain the public.

News to me and presumably everyone else. The UN chose 1979 to start their Arctic ice coverage figures which turns out to have been an errant maximum. Last year's dip was exactly the same as it was in 1974, when everyone was still worried about global cooling. Context appears to be quite important even in science.

Arctic- panic over!

In case anyone hadn't checked my training is in law and psychology, and as such have recognised over the years when it comes to facts people would normally rather accept the person than the material they present, meaning if someone has the correct authority status then most people switch off the critical button and accept them on trust.

Even though everyone makes mistakes, and the bigger the role the bigger the potential mistakes, the culture of trusting ones betters is inherent in society, so whatever the facts if a peer says the identical thing to a professor then the professor will always win, even if you disagreed beforehand, while the peer will only be agreed with if you agree already, or dismissed as unqualified.

I fight this prejudice every day in presenting not my data but those of professors, but simply by passing this data on secondhand loses almost all its value in the process. So today I just discovered this quote from the actual godfather of global warming, the man who singlehandedly addressed US congress in 1988 and was so well prepared he convinced president Clinton to pass the issue up to the UN and take the entire issue up as a global priority. Without Hansen global warming probably would never have been more than a trivial and obscure scientific observation with little funding to do no more than extrapolate from the sparse data available (measuring world levels of anything is almost impossible with any amount of resources, most fill in the gaps with equations).

It is now 25 years later, none of the expected warming took place, peaked in around 1998 and has now pretty well settled. It has been observed and backpedalled now by a number of top universities, and even Fritz Varenholt who was a lead author for the UN IPCC, who has been the first working non-independent expert to break from the pack and write an entire piece claiming the expectations from the 80s and 90s were now obsolete and no longer an issue. While not going that far, we now have the creator himself stating very directly:

A paper published today by James Hansen has some startling admissions, including:

the effect [forcing] of man-made greenhouse gas emissions has fallen below IPCC projections, despite an increase in man-made CO2 emissions exceeding IPCC projections

the growth rate of the greenhouse gas forcing has "remained below the peak values reached in the 1970s and early 1980s, has been relatively stable for about 20 years, and is falling below IPCC (2001) scenarios (figure 5)."

the airborne fraction of CO2 [the ratio of observed atmospheric CO2 increase to fossil fuel CO2 emissions] has decreased over the past 50 years [figure 3], especially after the year 2000

Hansen believes the explanation for this conundrum is CO2 fertilization of the biosphere from "the surge of fossil fuel use, mainly coal."

"the surge of fossil fuel emissions, especially from coal burning, along with the increasing atmospheric CO2 level is 'fertilizing' the biosphere, and thus limiting the growth of atmospheric CO2."

"the rate of global warming seems to be less this decade than it has been during the prior quarter century"

Bearing in mind the 25 year tirade on the threats of future warming, this is a turnround of epic proportions. There is literally (if that is the criterion) no higher authority on the planet on global warming as James Hansen. He started this on his own, set the system in motion, and spent the next 25 years keeping it going. But you can't fly in the face of reality, and in 2013 there is a totally different reaction by the temperature to what they expected, and without his acknowledgment now he would clearly have started looking out of touch with reality and would not want to be the last man standing.

Here it is

Anyone closely familiar with the personnel involved will probably think this is a hoax. Remember April 1st (no, it's next week) last year, and previously, there were always the odd hoax headline about Hansen saying there was no more global warming and he apologised for all the unnecessary trouble he had caused around the world as a result. And then today it happened on one of the other 364 days, yes, it is real, and there is no person higher to say otherwise. He is the man standing at the peak of the pyramid alone, that is where the buck of global warming has stopped.

Edit, I am both truly amazed and impressed, this has actually just been reported by a major outlet, The Economist. That both allows many more people to know it and in a way endorses it as an important piece of news as till now only one paper I know of reported a single opposite scientific opinion from an actual official source.

Worth it's own entry. Check out this hockey stick. It follows the IPCC's one closely.

Graph here

Except it's the solar activity record (something the UN claim has barely any effect on the temperature).

I don't think I saw this last year but even if I'd posted it then it's the first time a working IPCC member (as opposed to retirees or independent researchers) has turned his back on global warming. He has summarised the entire position in around a single page, and at that level of authority and knowledge would find it fairly hard to question as I'd been saying everything myself for years beforehand for one.

Fritz Vahrenholt, IPCC author

"Rather than being largely settled, there are more and more open climate questions which need to be addressed in an impartial and open-minded way."

That pretty well sums up his position, and explained covering every single aspect why. The governments and activists worldwide need to read this to make a genuine assessment of the position they will never see elsewhere unless from outside the existing climate community.

Ex-professor tells senators climate data manipulated

Professor Don Easterbrook

"A retired Western Washington University professor testified to a Republican-controlled state Senate committee Tuesday that climate change stopped in 1998 and that human-caused greenhouse gases are not responsible for fluctuations in the Earth's temperatures or melting polar ice caps."

I can't see this happening in Britain or many other countries.

That was in front of Washington State's legislature not the Senate of the Congress of the USA. It was much like someone testifying to an English County Board meeting. Now that his message is known, it's doubtful he'll ever testify before any Committee in Washington D.C.

Wonderful, of 50 states it had to happen in the only one possible to confuse with somewhere of vital importance. I stand corrected, but his testimony has not changed whoever he was telling it to.

NASA report

"For the three day period, March 8th through 10th, the thermosphere absorbed 26 billion kWh of energy. Infrared radiation from CO2 and NO, the two most efficient coolants in the thermosphere, re-radiated 95% of that total back into space."

What?

Copied over:


The Washington Post

The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consulafft, at Bergen, Norway

Reports from fishermen, seal hunters, and explorers all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes.

Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared.

Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds. Within a few years it is predicted that due to the ice melt the sea will rise and make most coastal cities uninhabitable.

________________________________

....... I apologize, I neglected to mention that this report was from November 2, 1922, as reported by the AP and published in The Washington Post - 90 years ago.

I have no truck with those whose main or only weapon to defend against climate sceptics is consensus, doctors were in consensus for centuries stomach ulcers were caused by excess acid (they weren't) and in the 70s we were heading for an ice age (clearly not). But the long lists of scientists I roll out every time to prove there is nothing of the sort always either is ignored altogether, gets wild accusations they work for big oil (no, they fund the winning side as you'd expect), or go to great efforts to personally attack the individual scientists themselves.

Now the German government have issued an official black list naming and shaming (in their eyes anyway) all the scientists who say man made global warming is probably not real. Do they realise they've just done something the press never have, and admitted officially there is indeed no consensus, as all these naughty experts disagree with it.

You couldn't make it up.

Germans name and shame but give credit to the opposition

As status carries the weight in this area, here is an interview with a Harvard astrophysicist who answers all the questions in ways everyone else not qualified would be vilified for. But if he's right then so are we, as it's all based on the same material, except he's qualified to interpret it directly.

Willie Soon interview

After some individual observations that individual high temperature years such as 1998, caused by the natural el nino, corresponded with years with higher annual rises of CO2, someone decided to plot them all. Every temperature peak is followed by a peak in CO2. It's funny how no one else appears to have noticed this very simple relationship but would be interested to hear anyone's explanations when they do see it.

Ole Humlum scores again

This has been explained by the Reading University's Bill Collins:

“There has been a big deal made of this being the second highest annual rise ever – but there is quite a lot of variability in CO2, due to plant ecosystems, so the last highest rise was after a very warm year.

“That was 1998 and not basically due to man-made causes but because it had been a hot year and the soils had given off a lot of CO2 and the plants had not grown strongly – so the year to year variability is often caused by the uptake of plants and trees."

It's quite hard to argue with that, and if it applies to 1998 and can be seen in all the other years, along with the given reasons, then why are we still being blamed for it?

Whole article