The Desperate Green Frenzy Continues

[_Droopy]

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/03/ ... tterfeed&u

Green forces, eager to promote their theories of global warming, appear to be practicing intellectual recycling. Is this the return of the notorious hockey stick - which, in 2001, was the central dogma of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) believers ?

This quasi-religious faith in catastrophic AGW still remains a prerequisite for membership in scientific and media elite circles, even in the face of the failure of earlier (model) predictions of apocalypse to manifest, and the admission by an apostle of the faith that for the past 17 years global temperatures have not increased -- contrary to the projections of every climate model.

As other religious fanatics, the failure only drives adherents to recycle past claims. Last week, in The Anatomy of Climate Science Hype, I discussed the manner of collaboration of the unholy trinity of ambitious scientists, a science journal anxious for publicity, and the old grey New York Times eagerly publishing anything that may tend to confirm their credo. In yet another NYT story (March 7) by science reporter Justin Gillis a research paper (March 8) in the formerly respected journal Science was previewed

Now, several of us skeptics (a term of honor in the long history of scientific advance) have had an opportunity to review that paper itself. It is a very detailed and difficult paper, whose lead author is Shaun Marcott of Oregon State University, obviously aiming to become the next poster-boy for the UN-sponsored IPCC (Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change). (I note that the OSU paper just made the cut-off deadline for the 2013 IPCC report.) After a great deal of work in analyzing proxy (historic, non-thermometer) data of the past 11,300 years, the start of the current warm interglacial Holocene period, the authors conclude that "recent warming is unprecedented." It is not -- but never mind. The same claim had been made previously (in a 1998 paper in Nature) by the notorious "Hockey-stick" graph produced by Michael "hide-the-decline" Mann, and exposed as being "not only wrong but essentially worthless" - to adapt a famous quote of one of my teachers, Nobel physicist Wolfgang Pauli.

The IPCC latched on to the Hockey-stick graph in 2001 as its main crutch in support of its claims for AGW. It promoted a newly minted Ph D student to international fame - or perhaps, notoriety. One can learn all about his fall from the pinnacle from Andrew Montfort's book The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science. The chapters on Climategate, based on thousands of e-mails, leaked (hacked? stolen? -- it depends whom you talk to) in Nov. 2009, relate the whole sordid story of a gang of IPCC scientists, mainly British and US, conspiring to control what goes into IPCC reports and scientific publications.

The IPCC no longer gives credence to the Hockey-stick graph and uses a different argument in its 2007 report to back up AGW. That argument is also failing, but the IPCC doesn't give up. Eventually, they will discover that AGW is insignificant and hardly visible. But by then much money will have been wasted to "fight climate change, keep the ocean from rising, and heal the Earth."

The Science paper

The four authors, three from OSU and one from Harvard, are quite fuzzy in defining the word "recent." Their analysis takes 1950 as "present." But then they add a humongous temperature increase by using all of the 20th century. That's really the crux of their claim, but also their weakest point: The only warming that's sure is from 1910 to 1940. Although that warming is certainly genuine, only a few fanatic scientists believe that it is human-caused. Not even the IPCC considers the warming up to 1940 as anthropogenic.

On the other hand, the large surface warming claimed from 1979 to 2000 may not even exist. Opinions are divided on this important question. The warming is certainly not seen in the satellite data, the best global temperature observations we have.

Of course, the authors ignore the fact that there has been no warming for at least a decade - while anthropogenic greenhouse gases have been increasing more rapidly. According to Philip Jones, the IPCC's guru on Global Temperatures, there hasn't been any significant global warming for 17 years!

Even stranger is their forecast for the future -- entirely based on climate models that have never been validated. Their exact quote is: "By 2100, global average temperatures will probably [be] 5 to 12 sigma deviations above the Holocene temperature mean." In non-technical language, this means a huge increase; but the probability of a large temperature rise is practically nil. Of course, they leave themselves plenty of room by providing at least half a dozen projections depending on assumed scenarios.

Hiding the data mix

What is distinctive about this latest effort at claiming unusual 20th-century warming and implying a human contribution is their presentation. The original hockey stick, first published in 1998, explained carefully that the modern instrumental (thermometer) record had been grafted onto a centuries-long proxy (non-thermometer) record; the OSU paper neglects to inform the reader about this important fact.

As a reviewer of IPCC reports, I well remember efforts to hide the mixing of proxy and thermometer data: IPCC's 3rd Assessment report (2001) showed the proxy temperature record with a black line and the 20th century temperatures with a blue line. I complained that these were very hard to distinguish -- especially in a black-and-white Xerox copy. Since then, the IPCC and everyone else have used a distinctive red color for the instrumental data. That kind of distinction, however, is missing in the present OSU-Harvard paper.

To use a current analogy: it's like putting horsemeat into Swedish meatballs that advertise beef. In the case of the meatballs, the DNA evidence betrayed the addition of horsemeat. Here it is the fact that one sees sharp temperature changes at the end of the record -- despite the authors' statement that they have used a 100-year smoothing of the raw data. With long smoothing times like a century, one cannot expect to see temperature spikes that may only be a decade long.

So what did they really do? I suspect that the paper is a rehash of Marcott's doctor's thesis. He too is a newly minted PhD (in 2011), lucky enough to get Hockeystick #2 not only published, but internationally promoted -- It's all based on analyses of 73 samples of deep-ocean sediments, corals, shells, etc. Nothing really new here: In 1996 Lloyd Keigwin (of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) published such an analysis in Science. He found that it was warmer 1000 years ago (during the Medieval Warm Period) - and much warmer 3000 years ago and earlier.

So why did the editors of Science give the OSU paper the 'special' treatment, sending out press releases, arranging interviews, etc? Perhaps they were captured by the authors' claim "that the planet today is warmer than it has been during 70 to 80 percent of the time over the past 11,300 years. But as British climate expert David Whitehouse points out "Of course, another way to put this is that current temperatures are colder than 28% of the Holocene. According to this research, the temperatures seen in the 20th century were about average for the Holocene."

This whole episode is one more illustration of once distinguished scientific journals hyping an upcoming article by sending out early press releases to selected journalists who will write a sensationalized story. It may impress laymen but it will have no significant impact on the real science debate about AGW. Its impact on policy is nil - or should be.

[_Brackite]

This quasi-religious faith in catastrophic AGW still remains a prerequisite for membership in scientific and media elite circles, even in the face of the failure of earlier (model) predictions of apocalypse to manifest, and the admission by an apostle of the faith that for the past 17 years global temperatures have not increased -- contrary to the projections of every climate model.

The highest temperature ever recorded in North American (on Earth) occurred July 10th, 1913 in Death Valley California. (World: Highest Temperature)

The highest temperature ever recorded in South America occurred on January 2nd, 1920 in Argentina.

The highest temperature ever recorded in Africa occurred on July 7th, 1931 in Tunisia.

The highest temperature ever recorded in Asia occurred on July 31th, 2012 in Kuwait.

The highest temperature ever recorded in Europe occurred on July 10th, 1977 in Greece.

The highest temperature ever recorded in Australia occurred on January 2nd, 1960.

The highest temperature ever recorded in Antarctica occurred on January 5th, 1974. (However, the highest temperature recorded at the South Pole occurred on December 25th, 2011.)


Out of the seven Continents with their highest temperature ever recorded, only Asia has its highest temperature ever recorded occurring after the year of 2000. The highest temperature ever recorded on Earth was 134 °F (56.7 °C) in Death Valley, California. That was almost 100 years ago.


From The EPA:

The Southwest is bordered by the Pacific Ocean to the west, the Rocky Mountains to the east, and Mexico to the south. The region includes the cities of Albuquerque, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Denver, San Diego, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and San Francisco, among others. The region is home to approximately 50 million residents and is growing quickly. [1] The population growth in each state in this region exceeded the national average growth rate between 2000 and 2010. Several states, such as Nevada (35.1%), Arizona (24.6%), and Utah (23.8%) experienced population growth rates more than double the national average of 9.7%. [1]

There is a wide range of elevation and climate types across the region. Elevation ranges from valleys that are below sea level to mountains that have some of the highest peaks in the continental United States. The region is generally drier than other regions of the United States. It includes deserts in the southern portion, such as the Mojave Desert. Areas of northern California, the Rocky Mountains, and Sierra Nevada tend to get more precipitation and snow. Additionally, the Central Valley in California is one of the most productive agricultural regions in the country.

The climate of the Southwest is changing. Over the last century, the average annual temperature has increased about 1.5°F. Average annual temperature is projected to rise an additional 2.5-8°F by the end of the century. [2] Warming in the Southwest is projected to be greatest in the summer. [3]

The highest temperature ever recorded in Arizona occurred on June 29, 1994, and July 5, 2007 at Lake Havasu City.

The highest temperature ever recorded in Nevada occurred on June 29, 1994 at Laughlin.

The highest temperature ever recorded in Utah occurred on July 4th, 2007 at St. George.

The highest temperature ever recorded in New Mexico occurred on on June 27, 1994.


Out of these four Southwestern U.S. States, two of these States had their highest temperature ever recorded after the year of 2000.

[_Analytics]

So, a peer-reviewed paper published in the journal Science constitutes a “desperate frenzy”, and an blog entry appearing on the website “americanthinker.com” is the cool-headed scientific truth that puts the frenzy in its place. Got it.

[_Res Ipsa]

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2 ... nfographic

[_Brackite]

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-01/numbers-uss-warmest-year-yet-infographic

From That Article:

The oldest high-temperature record that fell in 2012 was beaten when the mercury hit 87°F at Elko Regional Airport in Nevada on April 22.
A heat wave from June 23 to July 9 produced 324 all-time records, mostly in the Midwest and Southeast. The hottest among them: 118°F in Norton, Kansas, on June 28.
July 2012 was the single warmest month on record in the U.S.
The three hottest days were recorded in Death Valley: 128°F on July 12, and 126°F on August 9 and 10.
Sidney Municipal Airport in Nebraska logged 59 record highs, the most of any weather station.

I remain a little bit skeptical that 2012 was the warmest year on record in the United States. I remember 1988, 1994, and 2007 also being very warm years for the United States.


The highest temperature ever recorded in South Dakota occurred on July 15, 2006. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Dakota)

The highest recorded temperature ever recorded in Nebraska occurred on July 24, 1936. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebraska)

The highest temperature ever recorded in Kansas occurred on July 24, 1936. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas)

The highest temperature ever recorded in Oklahoma occurred on June 27, 1994. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma)

The highest temperature ever recorded in Arkansas occurred on August 10, 1936. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas)

The highest temperature ever recorded in Missouri occurred on July 14, 1954. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri)

The highest temperature ever recorded in Iowa occurred on July 20, 1934. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iowa)

The highest temperature ever recorded in Minnesota occurred on July 6, 1936. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota)

The highest temperature ever recorded in Wisconsin on July 13, 1936. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin)


Out of these nine Midwestern U.S. States, only one of these States has its highest temperature ever recorded occurring after the year of 2000.
There are not any of these nine States that have its highest recorded temperature occurring in 2012.



The highest temperature ever recorded in Omaha, Nebraska occurred in 1936.

The highest temperature ever recorded in Wichita, Kansas occurred in 1936.


The highest temperature ever recorded in Denver, Colorado occurred on August 8, 1878, July 20, 2005, June 25, 2012 and June 26, 2012.


Okay, Denver, Colorado's highest temperature recorded of 105 °F (41 °C) recently occurred on two dates in 2012.
However, the highest temperature ever recorded in Colorado occurred on July 11, 1888.

[_Brackite]

From Wikipedia:

Nevada is the driest state in the United States [20] It is made up of mostly desert and semiarid climate regions, daytime summer temperatures sometimes may rise as high as 125 °F (52 °C) and nighttime winter temperatures may reach as low as −50 °F (−46 °C). While winters in northern Nevada are long and fairly cold, the winter season in the southern part of the state tends to be of short duration and mild. Most parts of Nevada receive scarce precipitation during the year. Most rain that falls in the state falls on the lee side (east and northeast slopes) of the Sierra Nevada.

The average annual rainfall per year is about 7 inches (18 cm); the wettest parts get around 40 inches (100 cm). Nevada's highest recorded temperature is 125 °F (52 °C) at Laughlin on June 29, 1994 and the lowest recorded temperature is −50 °F (−46 °C) at San Jacinto on January 8, 1937. Nevada's 125 °F (52 °C) reading is the third highest temperature recorded in the U.S. just behind Arizona's 128 °F (53 °C) reading and California's 134 °F (57 °C) reading.

[_Res Ipsa]

Brackite, just look up the average temp in the U.S. for 2012. It's not that hard.

[_ludwigm]

http://wumo.com/img/strip/-WM_strip_DK_20111111.jpg

[_Brackite]

http://wumo.com/img/strip/-WM_strip_DK_20111111.jpg

I also hope that a lot People that are living in Florida are also looking forward to global warming, since it is predicted that some of Florida will be under water in about 100 more years. Most of Florida is just barely above sea level, and a lot of People have been moving down there within the last 30 years.

Brackite, just look up the average temp in the U.S. for 2012. It's not that hard.

Yes, it is likely correct that the United States saw its temperatures very much above average when we include January, February and March into account. With me living in the Western part of the United States, I didn't notice March really being that much above average. However, I recently noticed how much above average March was for the Central and Eastern parts of the United States.

From AccuWeather.com:

9 The number of consecutive days that Chicago, Ill., has broken a record high, from March 14 to March 22. Eight of those days saw the mercury climb above 80 degrees, which is normal for mid-June.

93 The temperature swing that occurred over the course of just nine days in International Falls, Minn., from a low of minus 14 degrees on March 9, to a high of 79 degrees on March 18. Also, 10 straight days of new record highs (March 13 to March 22).

26 The number of inches of snow that melted over the course of just seven days in Caribou, Maine, from March 15 to March 22, thanks to the unusual warmth. Also, 18 inches of snow was still on the ground when the first record high fell on March 18 (64 degrees).

32 The gap, in degrees, between the old and new record high on March 21 in Marquette, Mich. The new record high was 81 degrees, obliterating the old record of 49 degrees. The margin of defeat was so great that the low temperature that day was even higher than the old record high temperature.

...

86 The new all-time record high temperature for March in Detroit, Mich., set on March 22. In fact, a new all-time high temperature was set two days in a row, with the mercury first climbing to 84 degrees on March 21.

60 The average low temperature in Chicago, Ill., from March 17 to March 22 of this year. Such low temperatures, about 30 degrees above normal, are more typical for mid-June.

[_Res Ipsa]

Yes, it is likely correct that the United States saw its temperatures very much above average when we include January, February and March into account. With me living in the Western part of the United States, I didn't notice March really being that much above average. However, I recently noticed how much above average March was for the Central and Eastern parts of the United States.

If we want to talk about temps in 2012, I think we'd have to include all 12 months.