Climate Change

[james2012]

Growth of Cities Endangers Global Environment, According to New Analysis
Growth of cities endangers global environment, according to new analysis




Seto KC, Fragkias M, Guneralp B, Reilly MK. A Meta-Analysis of Global Urban Land Expansion. PLoS ONE 2011;6(8):e23777. PLoS ONE: A Meta-Analysis of Global Urban Land Expansion

The conversion of Earth's land surface to urban uses is one of the most irreversible human impacts on the global biosphere. It drives the loss of farmland, affects local climate, fragments habitats, and threatens biodiversity. Here we present a meta-analysis of 326 studies that have used remotely sensed images to map urban land conversion. We report a worldwide observed increase in urban land area of 58,000 km2 from 1970 to 2000. India, China, and Africa have experienced the highest rates of urban land expansion, and the largest change in total urban extent has occurred in North America. Across all regions and for all three decades, urban land expansion rates are higher than or equal to urban population growth rates, suggesting that urban growth is becoming more expansive than compact. Annual growth in GDP per capita drives approximately half of the observed urban land expansion in China but only moderately affects urban expansion in India and Africa, where urban land expansion is driven more by urban population growth. In high income countries, rates of urban land expansion are slower and increasingly related to GDP growth. However, in North America, population growth contributes more to urban expansion than it does in Europe. Much of the observed variation in urban expansion was not captured by either population, GDP, or other variables in the model. This suggests that contemporary urban expansion is related to a variety of factors difficult to observe comprehensively at the global level, including international capital flows, the informal economy, land use policy, and generalized transport costs. Using the results from the global model, we develop forecasts for new urban land cover using SRES Scenarios. Our results show that by 2030, global urban land cover will increase between 430,000 km2 and 12,568,000 km2, with an estimate of 1,527,000 km2 more likely.

Debunked by Plimer and actually the cause of some of the bad data - cities and their contribution not only to the models but to the measurement devices. Rather than continue to be a teacher of those less knowledgeable, read Ian Plimer's book. He provides arguments based on something called science. For those unfamiliar with the term, I suggest your nearest dictionary.

 

[james2012]

Just wanted to add - think. Think of the size - in volume - of the Earth. Think of the size of cities compared to that volume. This of the amount of gasses from those cities. Think of the same amount of gasses from dispersed populations that cover a wider area but have the same population and gas dispersal. Do some basic math, understand how gasses are dispersed.

Cities cause LOCAL warming, but not Globull warming. If you concentrate measurement equipment in cities and ignore the less populated areas, you skew the data. EVEN WITH THE SKEWED DATA - the IPCC still found it necessary - as I point out above - to hide the decline. In other words, even with skewed data towards the high end, you still get a decline.

Now go back to worshiping the faux BS that is Globull warming. Like Plimer says - it's like a cult or religion. Feeling brainwashed today?

 

[james2012]

Gmeritsless the TeaTard here just wanting to provide the best synopsis of the current status of the Globull warming debate and it does not look pretty for the kooky fringe (and it is now a fringe):

RealClearPolitics - Al Gore Goes on a Tirade

Former Vice President Al Gore went on a profanity-laced tirade at the Aspen Institute Aug. 4 against the rising number of Americans who are skeptical about man-made global warming.

According to a Harris poll in July, only 44 percent of us now believe carbon dioxide emissions are warming the Earth, down from 51 percent in 2009 and 71 percent in 2007.

Global temperatures peaked in 1998. People have noticed winters are getting colder.

When evidence emerged in 2009 that scientists affiliated with the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in Britain were "hiding the decline" by fudging data, few journalists paid much attention.

But a lot of Americans did, apparently. In a Rasmussen poll Aug. 3, 69 percent of respondents said it was at least somewhat likely scientists have falsified research data.

According to global warming theory, carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels are trapping heat in the upper atmosphere, inexorably warming the planet.

The theory ignored inconvenient facts:

• In the Medieval Warm Period (950-1250 AD), and the Roman Warm Period (250 BC-400 AD), there were no automobiles or factories, but temperatures were warmer than now.

• In geologic history, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere were much higher, but temperatures often were lower. In the Late Ordovician Period, CO2 concentrations were 12 times higher than they are today. The Late Ordovician Period was an ice age.

• Vostok (Antarctica) ice core samples indicate temperature changes have preceded changes in CO2 concentrations by an average of 800 years. This couldn't happen if CO2 caused temperature changes.

• CO2 in the atmosphere has increased since 1998, but temperatures haven't.

Now a peer-reviewed study of NASA satellite data indicates the computer models warmists rely upon grossly exaggerate the amount of heat being trapped in the atmosphere.

Mr. Gore's alarmist predictions have proved false. Polar ice caps are larger. So is the polar bear population (and the scientist upon whom Mr. Gore relied for his claim that the polar bear is endangered is facing accusations of scientific misconduct). The rise in sea levels -- which has been going on since the end of the last ice age -- is slowing down.

Mr. Gore can respond only with curses, and ever more hysterical predictions of imminent doom. His credibility is in tatters. In the public mind, he's gone from Nobel Prize winner to Chicken Little.

Anthropogenic (man-made) global warming is a "contrived phony mess that is falling apart of its own weight," said Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a candidate for president. It's the most harmful hoax in history, because President Barack Obama bases job-killing policies on it.

Thanks to the new technique of hydraulic fracturing (fracking), which makes it possible to recover oil and natural gas trapped in shale, the United States now has more reserves of oil, coal and natural gas than any other nation, concluded the Congressional Research Service.

"Shale gas doesn't change everything, it's much more important than that," said British energy expert Nick Grealy.

If these resources were exploited properly, America could be energy independent very soon. Millions of well-paying jobs would be created. New tax revenues would flood the Treasury. The cost of gasoline and electricity would plummet.

But the government forbids oil drilling in most of Alaska, most areas offshore and much of the West. Regulations proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency would destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs in the coal and electric power industries, and send electric bills soaring.

Mr. Obama's efforts to force Detroit to build electric cars consumers don't want (think a Chevette with a Cadillac price tag) may cost 220,000 jobs in the auto industry.

Our economically illiterate president prattles on about "green jobs." But so-called "renewables" require massive government subsidies to produce little energy. Studies in Spain, Britain and Italy indicate each subsidized "green" job costs, respectively, 2.2, 3.7 and 4.8 jobs in the private sector.

Industrial wind turbines -- a favorite of Mr. Obama's -- cause real environmental harm. Fossil fuels are persecuted for their alleged contributions to a phantom problem. To protect us from that phantom, President Obama is killing our economy.

Those damn inconvenient facts, if only they would just go away so the UN can take our money and give it to other countries.

 

[james2012]

Hurricane Irene Marks First Big U.S. Threat In Years | FoxNews.com

First in three years. But I thought all this Globull warming was going to create horrible hurricane seasons for the foreseeable future? Warm Gulf waters driving mega-storms and destroying the southern coast.

I can't wait to hear the excuses on this one from the GBull warming community. Yeah, but, but, but....Bullshit!

 

[james2012]

Now here is some real science:

The Global Warming Hoax Explained for Dummies - YouTube

 

[james2012]

exohuman | ClimateGate Timeline

 

[james2012]

exohuman | ClimateGate Timeline

One could spend all day on this chart. Facts that expose the depth and breadth of the coverup and data manipulation. It's a goldmine for those who seek the truth.

 

[james2012]

One could spend all day on this chart. Facts that expose the depth and breadth of the coverup and data manipulation. It's a goldmine for those who seek the truth.

In a nutshell - but the details are worth looking into as it really begins to drive home the reality and lengths these guys would go through:

1. [T]he authors co-operated covertly to ensure that only papers favorable to CO2-forced AGW [Anthropogenic Global Warming or man-made global warming] were published, and that editors and journals publishing contrary papers were punished. They also attempted to ‘discipline’ scientists and journalists who published skeptical information.

2. [T]he authors manipulated and ‘massaged’ the data to strengthen the case in favor of unprecedented CO2-forced AGW, and to suppress their own data if it called AGW into question.

3. [T]he authors co-operated (perhaps the word is ‘conspired’) to prevent data from being made available to other researchers through either data archiving requests or through the Freedom of Information Acts of both the U.S. and the UK.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Permafrost Could Release Vast Amounts of Carbon and Accelerate Climate Change by End of Century
Permafrost could release vast amounts of carbon and accelerate climate change by end of century

ScienceDaily (Aug. 22, 2011) — Billions of tons of carbon trapped in high-latitude permafrost may be released into the atmosphere by the end of this century as Earth's climate changes, further accelerating global warming, a new computer modeling study indicates.

The study also found that soil in high-latitude regions could shift from being a sink to a source of carbon dioxide by the end of the 21st century as the soil warms in response to climate change.

The research was led by Charles Koven of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). He conducted the research with a team of scientists from France, Canada, and the United Kingdom while he was a postdoctoral researcher at France's Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement. The modeling was conducted at a supercomputing facility run by France's Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission.

Their study was published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Their findings counter results from a comparison of models that was included in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 fourth assessment report. The comparison found that climate change will spark a growth in high-latitude vegetation, which will pull in more carbon from the atmosphere than thawing permafrost will release.

But unlike earlier models, the new model includes detailed processes of how carbon accumulates in high-latitude soil over millennia, and how it's released as permafrost thaws. Because it includes these processes, the model begins with much more carbon in the soil than previous models. It also better represents the carbon's vulnerability to decomposition as the soil warms.

As a result, the new model found that the increase in carbon uptake by more vegetation will be overshadowed by a much larger amount of carbon released into the atmosphere.

"Including permafrost processes turns out to be very important," says Koven, who joined Berkeley Lab's Earth Sciences Division as a staff scientist earlier this year. "Previous models tended to dramatically underestimate the amount of soil carbon at high latitudes because they lacked the processes of how carbon builds up in soil. Our model starts off with more carbon in the soil, so there is much more to lose with global warming."

Koven and colleagues set out to estimate how much carbon dioxide and methane (which contains carbon) could be released by boreal and Arctic land ecosystems as a result of climate change. These regions are crucial to the global carbon cycle because they are rich in soil organic carbon, which has built up in frozen soils and peat layers over thousands of years.

Much of this carbon is presently trapped and not cycling. But scientists believe that some of it could be released in response to warming and become a positive feedback to global climate change. At stake is an estimated 2,167 petagrams of carbon in all layers of high-latitude soil, which is more than two trillion U.S. tons.

The scientists modified a land surface ecosystem model called ORCHIDEE to account for how carbon behaves at different layers, such as at the surface versus 30 centimeters below ground. They also accounted for the rate of soil carbon decomposition as a function of temperature at the freeze-thaw boundary, which sinks deeper and deeper as soil warms. Other improvements include soil physics that more realistically capture the effects of organic matter on carbon. Most other models do not have all of these phenomena.

To determine how these processes affect the balance of carbon dioxide and methane in high-latitude soils, the scientists ran four simulations from 1860 to 2100, each with a different assortment of processes. They added in a middle-of-the-road climate change scenario that caused high-latitude surface soil to rise 8 degrees Celsius by 2100, which is much greater than the global average.

The simulations revealed a climate-induced loss of between 25 and 85 petagrams of carbon, depending on the processes included. The best estimate is from a simulation that includes all of the permafrost soil processes. It found that 62 petagrams of soil carbon will be released into the atmosphere by 2100, or about 68 billion U.S. tons. This release of carbon is equivalent to an additional 7.5 years of global anthropogenic emissions at today's rate.

The simulation also found only a slight increase in methane release, which is contrary to previous predictions.

"People have this idea that permafrost thaw will release methane," says Koven. "But whether carbon comes out as carbon dioxide or methane is dependent on hydrology and other fine-scale processes that models have a poor ability to resolve. It's possible that warming at high latitudes leads to drying in many regions, and thus less methane emissions, and in fact this is what we found."

Koven adds that there are large uncertainties in the model that need to be addressed, such as the role of nitrogen feedbacks, which affect plant growth. And he says that more research is needed to better understand the processes that cause carbon to be released in permanently frozen, seasonally frozen, and thawed soil layers. Researchers in Berkeley Lab's Earth Sciences Division are focusing on improving global climate model representations of these processes under two Department of Energy-funded projects.

The research was supported by the Department of Energy's Office of Science and project Impact-Boreal, which is funded by France's Agence Nationale pour la Recherche and the


Koven CD, Ringeval B, Friedlingstein P, et al. Permafrost carbon-climate feedbacks accelerate global warming. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Permafrost carbon-climate feedbacks accelerate global warming

Permafrost soils contain enormous amounts of organic carbon, which could act as a positive feedback to global climate change due to enhanced respiration rates with warming. We have used a terrestrial ecosystem model that includes permafrost carbon dynamics, inhibition of respiration in frozen soil layers, vertical mixing of soil carbon from surface to permafrost layers, and CH4 emissions from flooded areas, and which better matches new circumpolar inventories of soil carbon stocks, to explore the potential for carbon-climate feedbacks at high latitudes. Contrary to model results for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC AR4), when permafrost processes are included, terrestrial ecosystems north of 60°N could shift from being a sink to a source of CO2 by the end of the 21st century when forced by a Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) A2 climate change scenario. Between 1860 and 2100, the model response to combined CO2 fertilization and climate change changes from a sink of 68 Pg to a 27 + -7 Pg sink to 4 + -18 Pg source, depending on the processes and parameter values used. The integrated change in carbon due to climate change shifts from near zero, which is within the range of previous model estimates, to a climate-induced loss of carbon by ecosystems in the range of 25 + -3 to 85 + -16 Pg C, depending on processes included in the model, with a best estimate of a 62 + -7 Pg C loss. Methane emissions from high-latitude regions are calculated to increase from 34 Tg CH4/y to 41–70 Tg CH4/y, with increases due to CO2 fertilization, permafrost thaw, and warming-induced increased CH4 flux densities partially offset by a reduction in wetland extent.

 

[james2012]

Permafrost Could Release Vast Amounts of Carbon and Accelerate Climate Change by End of Century
Permafrost could release vast amounts of carbon and accelerate climate change by end of century

ScienceDaily (Aug. 22, 2011) — Billions of tons of carbon trapped in high-latitude permafrost may be released into the atmosphere by the end of this century as Earth's climate changes, further accelerating global warming, a new computer modeling study indicates.

The study also found that soil in high-latitude regions could shift from being a sink to a source of carbon dioxide by the end of the 21st century as the soil warms in response to climate change.

The research was led by Charles Koven of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). He conducted the research with a team of scientists from France, Canada, and the United Kingdom while he was a postdoctoral researcher at France's Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement. The modeling was conducted at a supercomputing facility run by France's Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission.

Their study was published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Their findings counter results from a comparison of models that was included in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 fourth assessment report. The comparison found that climate change will spark a growth in high-latitude vegetation, which will pull in more carbon from the atmosphere than thawing permafrost will release.

But unlike earlier models, the new model includes detailed processes of how carbon accumulates in high-latitude soil over millennia, and how it's released as permafrost thaws. Because it includes these processes, the model begins with much more carbon in the soil than previous models. It also better represents the carbon's vulnerability to decomposition as the soil warms.

As a result, the new model found that the increase in carbon uptake by more vegetation will be overshadowed by a much larger amount of carbon released into the atmosphere.

"Including permafrost processes turns out to be very important," says Koven, who joined Berkeley Lab's Earth Sciences Division as a staff scientist earlier this year. "Previous models tended to dramatically underestimate the amount of soil carbon at high latitudes because they lacked the processes of how carbon builds up in soil. Our model starts off with more carbon in the soil, so there is much more to lose with global warming."

Koven and colleagues set out to estimate how much carbon dioxide and methane (which contains carbon) could be released by boreal and Arctic land ecosystems as a result of climate change. These regions are crucial to the global carbon cycle because they are rich in soil organic carbon, which has built up in frozen soils and peat layers over thousands of years.

Much of this carbon is presently trapped and not cycling. But scientists believe that some of it could be released in response to warming and become a positive feedback to global climate change. At stake is an estimated 2,167 petagrams of carbon in all layers of high-latitude soil, which is more than two trillion U.S. tons.

The scientists modified a land surface ecosystem model called ORCHIDEE to account for how carbon behaves at different layers, such as at the surface versus 30 centimeters below ground. They also accounted for the rate of soil carbon decomposition as a function of temperature at the freeze-thaw boundary, which sinks deeper and deeper as soil warms. Other improvements include soil physics that more realistically capture the effects of organic matter on carbon. Most other models do not have all of these phenomena.

To determine how these processes affect the balance of carbon dioxide and methane in high-latitude soils, the scientists ran four simulations from 1860 to 2100, each with a different assortment of processes. They added in a middle-of-the-road climate change scenario that caused high-latitude surface soil to rise 8 degrees Celsius by 2100, which is much greater than the global average.

The simulations revealed a climate-induced loss of between 25 and 85 petagrams of carbon, depending on the processes included. The best estimate is from a simulation that includes all of the permafrost soil processes. It found that 62 petagrams of soil carbon will be released into the atmosphere by 2100, or about 68 billion U.S. tons. This release of carbon is equivalent to an additional 7.5 years of global anthropogenic emissions at today's rate.

The simulation also found only a slight increase in methane release, which is contrary to previous predictions.

"People have this idea that permafrost thaw will release methane," says Koven. "But whether carbon comes out as carbon dioxide or methane is dependent on hydrology and other fine-scale processes that models have a poor ability to resolve. It's possible that warming at high latitudes leads to drying in many regions, and thus less methane emissions, and in fact this is what we found."

Koven adds that there are large uncertainties in the model that need to be addressed, such as the role of nitrogen feedbacks, which affect plant growth. And he says that more research is needed to better understand the processes that cause carbon to be released in permanently frozen, seasonally frozen, and thawed soil layers. Researchers in Berkeley Lab's Earth Sciences Division are focusing on improving global climate model representations of these processes under two Department of Energy-funded projects.

The research was supported by the Department of Energy's Office of Science and project Impact-Boreal, which is funded by France's Agence Nationale pour la Recherche and the


Koven CD, Ringeval B, Friedlingstein P, et al. Permafrost carbon-climate feedbacks accelerate global warming. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Permafrost carbon-climate feedbacks accelerate global warming

Permafrost soils contain enormous amounts of organic carbon, which could act as a positive feedback to global climate change due to enhanced respiration rates with warming. We have used a terrestrial ecosystem model that includes permafrost carbon dynamics, inhibition of respiration in frozen soil layers, vertical mixing of soil carbon from surface to permafrost layers, and CH4 emissions from flooded areas, and which better matches new circumpolar inventories of soil carbon stocks, to explore the potential for carbon-climate feedbacks at high latitudes. Contrary to model results for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC AR4), when permafrost processes are included, terrestrial ecosystems north of 60°N could shift from being a sink to a source of CO2 by the end of the 21st century when forced by a Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) A2 climate change scenario. Between 1860 and 2100, the model response to combined CO2 fertilization and climate change changes from a sink of 68 Pg to a 27 + -7 Pg sink to 4 + -18 Pg source, depending on the processes and parameter values used. The integrated change in carbon due to climate change shifts from near zero, which is within the range of previous model estimates, to a climate-induced loss of carbon by ecosystems in the range of 25 + -3 to 85 + -16 Pg C, depending on processes included in the model, with a best estimate of a 62 + -7 Pg C loss. Methane emissions from high-latitude regions are calculated to increase from 34 Tg CH4/y to 41–70 Tg CH4/y, with increases due to CO2 fertilization, permafrost thaw, and warming-induced increased CH4 flux densities partially offset by a reduction in wetland extent.

Um, CO2 is a lagging indicator of climate change. Not a causal one. The lag can be quite large - sometimes as large as 800 years. So the study above only states one possible fact - CO2 may be released. And...?

And this is an event that could release a shitload of CO2 - more than American and the rest of the developed world combined. The earth will handle it - it has in the past.

 

[james2012]

Now we have reality: http://hotair.com/headlines/archives/2011/07/07/new-global-cost-of-going-green-per-un-report-76-trillion-over-40-years/

That's 76 trillion. You think the economy is bad now? And all in the name of junk science. Even Romney is backtracking - I guess he say the poll that 69% of Americans believe AGW science data to be faked.

Guess who is helped by his backtracking? I'll give you one guess.

Romney backpedaling on anthropogenic global warming? Hot Air

Any party that takes up cap-and-trade and passes it or does not stop the EPA will soon find themselves voted out of power. Even the poor will be paying out the nose for this fiasco and guess who they will be voting for then?

 

[Michael Scally MD]

When was the last time the Austin Temp was 109 degrees? But, hey, there is NO climate change because I say so! 7-Day Forecast for Latitude 30.27?N and Longitude 97.74?W (Elev. 508 ft)

Austin about to set record for 100-degree days
http://www.statesman.com/news/local/austin-about-to-set-record-for-100-degree-1781012.html


ROTFLMAO

 

[james2012]

When was the last time the Austin Temp was 109 degrees? But, hey, there is NO climate change because I say so! 7-Day Forecast for Latitude 30.27?N and Longitude 97.74?W (Elev. 508 ft)

Austin about to set record for 100-degree days
http://www.statesman.com/news/local/austin-about-to-set-record-for-100-degree-1781012.html


ROTFLMAO

Um - July 1954: Austin TX Weather, Austin Record Temps, Austin Weather History. I guess we had more CO2 emissions back then right?

We had one of the coldest winters on record in the world last year, and one of the hottest summers. I have plenty of data above which shows sea levels are not raising and exposes the entire hoax in a timeline easy to follow - NONE OF WHICH YOU REFUTE. I am not saying it - most scientists are (http://minnesotansforglobalwarming.com/m4gw/2010/06/97-of-scientists-who-believe-in-global-warming-still-believe-in-global-warming.html (97% of Scientists Who Believe In Global Warming, Still Believe in Global Warming - Minnesotans For Global Warming)) and most Americans think the data is faked (over 60%). You should read the posts before exposing yourself so easily. So get you facts straight and put that degree to good use.

And check the medieval warming period which was warmer than today - one of many times we were warmer with lower CO2 levels that spiked hundreds of years later. Again, read the posts. Refute it. Do some research before picking a single data point where a high pressure has been sitting over the area. It's called weather.

Oh, and here is the worst heatwave ever - in 1923: World’s Worst Heatwave – The Marble Bar heatwave, 1923-24 | Watts Up With That?

Shame on you - a so-called scientist - for trying to pull the wool over everyone's eyes by A. not addressing any of the facts I provide in the above posts and B, picking a data point in Texas where a high pressure system has been parked over the state and C, not pointing out the worse heat wave ever was back in early 1900s, while also ignoring data that periods of higher temperature with lower CO2 exists and ignoring all the data from Ian Plimer (you know, actual facts and not hype). You got your degree where again?

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Republicans Against Science
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/opinion/republicans-against-science.html

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: August 28, 2011

Jon Huntsman Jr., a former Utah governor and ambassador to China, isn’t a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination. And that’s too bad, because Mr. Hunstman has been willing to say the unsayable about the G.O.P. — namely, that it is becoming the “anti-science party.” This is an enormously important development. And it should terrify us.

To see what Mr. Huntsman means, consider recent statements by the two men who actually are serious contenders for the G.O.P. nomination: Rick Perry and Mitt Romney.

Mr. Perry, the governor of Texas, recently made headlines by dismissing evolution as “just a theory,” one that has “got some gaps in it” — an observation that will come as news to the vast majority of biologists. But what really got peoples’ attention was what he said about climate change: “I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. And I think we are seeing almost weekly, or even daily, scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change.”

That’s a remarkable statement — or maybe the right adjective is “vile.”

The second part of Mr. Perry’s statement is, as it happens, just false: the scientific consensus about man-made global warming — which includes 97 percent to 98 percent of researchers in the field, according to the National Academy of Sciences — is getting stronger, not weaker, as the evidence for climate change just keeps mounting.

In fact, if you follow climate science at all you know that the main development over the past few years has been growing concern that projections of future climate are underestimating the likely amount of warming. Warnings that we may face civilization-threatening temperature change by the end of the century, once considered outlandish, are now coming out of mainstream research groups.

But never mind that, Mr. Perry suggests; those scientists are just in it for the money, “manipulating data” to create a fake threat. In his book “Fed Up,” he dismissed climate science as a “contrived phony mess that is falling apart.”

I could point out that Mr. Perry is buying into a truly crazy conspiracy theory, which asserts that thousands of scientists all around the world are on the take, with not one willing to break the code of silence. I could also point out that multiple investigations into charges of intellectual malpractice on the part of climate scientists have ended up exonerating the accused researchers of all accusations. But never mind: Mr. Perry and those who think like him know what they want to believe, and their response to anyone who contradicts them is to start a witch hunt.

So how has Mr. Romney, the other leading contender for the G.O.P. nomination, responded to Mr. Perry’s challenge? In trademark fashion: By running away. In the past, Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, has strongly endorsed the notion that man-made climate change is a real concern. But, last week, he softened that to a statement that he thinks the world is getting hotter, but “I don’t know that” and “I don’t know if it’s mostly caused by humans.” Moral courage!

Of course, we know what’s motivating Mr. Romney’s sudden lack of conviction. According to Public Policy Polling, only 21 percent of Republican voters in Iowa believe in global warming (and only 35 percent believe in evolution). Within the G.O.P., willful ignorance has become a litmus test for candidates, one that Mr. Romney is determined to pass at all costs.

So it’s now highly likely that the presidential candidate of one of our two major political parties will either be a man who believes what he wants to believe, even in the teeth of scientific evidence, or a man who pretends to believe whatever he thinks the party’s base wants him to believe.

And the deepening anti-intellectualism of the political right, both within and beyond the G.O.P., extends far beyond the issue of climate change.

Lately, for example, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page has gone beyond its long-term preference for the economic ideas of “charlatans and cranks” — as one of former President George W. Bush’s chief economic advisers famously put it — to a general denigration of hard thinking about matters economic. Pay no attention to “fancy theories” that conflict with “common sense,” the Journal tells us. Because why should anyone imagine that you need more than gut feelings to analyze things like financial crises and recessions?

Now, we don’t know who will win next year’s presidential election. But the odds are that one of these years the world’s greatest nation will find itself ruled by a party that is aggressively anti-science, indeed anti-knowledge. And, in a time of severe challenges — environmental, economic, and more — that’s a terrifying prospect.

 

[james2012]

ROFLMAO: Paul Krugman! Oh no you didn't!

 

[james2012]

And not a single piece of science in the whole Krugman piece.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

CLIMATE SHOCK: UC-Berkeley Scientist, Dr. John Harte, Puts the World on Notice
CLIMATE SHOCK: UC-Berkeley Scientist, Dr. John Harte, Puts the World on Notice - Forbes

 

[GirlyMan]

ROFLMAO: Paul Krugman! Oh no you didn't!

OH NO HE DIDN'T! Heaven forbid someone introduce an opinion from a Nobel Prize winning economist to counter an argument from an anonymous teatard on a muscle board. That's just crazy talk.

Here's Politifact's take on it:: Rick Perry says more and more scientists are questioning global warming - False. If gemeritless is true to form he will now commence a direct attack on the integrity of Politifact. These teatards are not only relying on us to be totally clueless stupid fucking idiots, if they had their way they would indoctrinate our offspring into the joyously oblivious world of being a totally clueless stupid fucking idiot.

 

[james2012]

Science is winning. The unraveling has began: Has the AGW argument imploded? Hot Air

Has new research disproven the theoretical models of anthropogenic global warming? A new study by a European nuclear research group appears to show that the actual prime cause of temperature shifts in the Earth’s climate isn’t carbon dioxide at all, or even the broader range of “greenhouse gases,” but the large ball of fire in the center of the solar system. Not that this study from CERN has attracted much attention in the media, at least not in the US — but at least Nature reported the results and the implications:

It sounds like a conspiracy theory: ‘cosmic rays’ from deep space might be creating clouds in Earth’s atmosphere and changing the climate. Yet an experiment at CERN, Europe’s high-energy physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, is finding tentative evidence for just that.

Er, it really doesn’t sound like a conspiracy theory. The notion that the sun heats the planets is rather mundane, or at least it used to be before scientists started claiming that carbon dioxide would superheat the atmosphere. In fact, AGW skeptics have long pointed to solar cycles as a much more likely explanation for the gradual but uneven warming seen over the last century or so.

To find out, Kirkby and his team are bringing the atmosphere down to Earth in an experiment called Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets (CLOUD). The team fills a custom-built chamber with ultrapure air and chemicals believed to seed clouds: water vapour, sulphur dioxide, ozone and ammonia. They then bombard the chamber with protons from the same accelerator that feeds the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful particle smasher. As the synthetic cosmic rays stream in, the group carefully samples the artificial atmosphere to see what effect the rays are having.

Early results seem to indicate that cosmic rays do cause a change. The high-energy protons seemed to enhance the production of nanometre-sized particles from the gaseous atmosphere by more than a factor of ten. But, Kirkby adds, those particles are far too small to serve as seeds for clouds. “At the moment, it actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it’s a very important first step,” he says.

Lawrence Solomon declares the science settled already in his column at the Financial Post. He also notes that Kirby has a reason to downplay the results of the research, and it’s not because of scientific caution:

The science is now all-but-settled on global warming, convincing new evidence demonstrates, but Al Gore, the IPCC and other global warming doomsayers won’t be celebrating. The new findings point to cosmic rays and the sun — not human activities — as the dominant controller of climate on Earth. …

Nigel Calder, a former editor of The New Scientist who attended that 1996 conference, would not be cowed. Himself a physicist, Mr. Calder became convinced of the merits of the argument and a year later, following a lecture he gave at a CERN conference, so too did Jasper Kirkby, a CERN scientist in attendance. Mr. Kirkby then convinced the CERN bureaucracy of the theory’s importance and developed a plan to create a cloud chamber — he called it CLOUD, for “Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets.”

But Mr. Kirkby made the same tactical error that the Danes had — not realizing how politicized the global warming issue was, he candidly shared his views with the scientific community.

“The theory will probably be able to account for somewhere between a half and the whole of the increase in the Earth’s temperature that we have seen in the last century,” Mr. Kirkby told the scientific press in 1998, explaining that global warming may be part of a natural cycle in the Earth’s temperature.

The global warming establishment sprang into action, pressured the Western governments that control CERN, and almost immediately succeeded in suspending CLOUD. It took Mr. Kirkby almost a decade of negotiation with his superiors, and who knows how many compromises and unspoken commitments, to convince the CERN bureaucracy to allow the project to proceed. And years more to create the cloud chamber and convincingly validate the Danes’ groundbreaking theory.

Solomon says that CERN has “found the path to the Holy Grail of climate change,” although they seem intent on hiding the evidence of it. Solomon links to a graph that Nature apparently didn’t publish, which shows the reaction from cosmic rays in the CLOUD chamber and the rapid creation of particles associated with cloud formation in the atmosphere:

The graph above does not appear in the print edition of Nature, but it does make showing at the back of the online supplementary material. The graph shows how cosmic rays promote the formation of clusters of molecules that can then grow and seed clouds in the real atmosphere.

At 03.45 am in a CLOUD experiment in Geneva, ultraviolet light began to create molecules in the cloud chamber, which approximates the air in the atmosphere. Jn above shows the neutral phase of the experiment, during which the CLOUD experiment electrically removed ions and molecular clusters. At 4.33 am, the CLOUD experiment stopped the electrical removal and allowed natural glalactic cosmic rays (Jgcr) to enter the chamber through the roof of the Geneva building, leading to a faster rate of cluster buildup.

Then, at 4.58 am, CLOUD also beamed charged pion particles (Jch) from an accelerator (these are equivalent to cosmic rays), the rate of cluster production took off, convincingly demonstrating the effect of cosmic rays on cluster growth.

British newspapers like the Register and the Telegraph have reported on the results from CERN, but it’s not received much attention from the American media. Investors Business Daily wonders why all of those who proclaimed the supposedly “settled science” are now so quiet:

With the help of an eager media, they have spun a nearly believable tale of fright and insulated themselves well from the skeptics.

But their days are few. Truth keeps getting in the way of their indoctrination effort.

And it’s not just the CERN research creating a problem for them. They also need to explain why sea levels, like presidential approval numbers and consumer confidence, have fallen. According to NASA, the oceans are down a quarter of an inch this year compared to 2010.

Under the rules of climate change, sea levels, due to melting ice and water that expands as it warms, should be increasing in a way that we’re all supposed to believe is a threat. But NASA scientists say that El Nino and La Nina, weather cycles in the Pacific Ocean, have caused sea levels to fall.

The new CERN research is certainly promising. I’d like to see more before we declare it a Holy Grail, however. Scientific concepts require reproducibility for credibility, although it’s certainly true that AGW has been a glaring exception to the scientific method. The first results of this research explain a lot of the failures of the AGW models, which relied on CO2 as a trigger for temperature increases with no correlation ever proven and no AGW climate model ever producing an accurate prediction. Let’s stick to actual science rather than blind devotion to faith, which is all that AGW advocates have now to keep going.

Is that you in my rear-view mirror I see? Eat. My. Dust. And more is coming. AGW is becoming extinct as an idea with the exception of a few dinosaurs. Science is winning the day.

 

[GirlyMan]

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