Bad news just keeps piling up for climate alarmists

[_bcspace]

The Mail on Sunday today presents irrefutable evidence that official predictions of global climate warming have been catastrophically flawed.

The graph on this page blows apart the ‘scientific basis’ for Britain reshaping its entire economy and spending billions in taxes and subsidies in order to cut emissions of greenhouse gases. These moves have already added £100 a year to household energy bills.



Steadily climbing orange and red bands on the graph show the computer predictions of world temperatures used by the official United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The estimates – given with 75 per cent and 95 per cent certainty – suggest only a five per cent chance of the real temperature falling outside both bands.

But when the latest official global temperature figures from the Met Office are placed over the predictions, they show how wrong the estimates have been, to the point of falling out of the ‘95 per cent’ band completely.

The graph shows in incontrovertible detail how the speed of global warming has been massively overestimated. Yet those forecasts have had a ruinous impact on the bills we pay, from heating to car fuel to huge sums paid by councils to reduce carbon emissions.

The eco-debate was, in effect, hijacked by false data. The forecasts have also forced jobs abroad as manufacturers relocate to places with no emissions targets.

A version of the graph appears in a leaked draft of the IPCC’s landmark Fifth Assessment Report due out later this year. It comes as leading climate scientists begin to admit that their worst fears about global warming will not be realised.

Academics are revising their views after acknowledging the miscalculation. Last night Myles Allen, Oxford University’s Professor of Geosystem Science, said that until recently he believed the world might be on course for a catastrophic temperature rise of more than five degrees this century.

But he now says: ‘The odds have come down,’ – adding that warming is likely to be significantly lower.
Prof Allen says higher estimates are now ‘looking iffy’.

The graph confirms there has been no statistically significant increase in the world’s average temperature since January 1997 – as this newspaper first disclosed last year.

At the end of last year the Met Office revised its ten-year forecast predicting a succession of years breaking records for warmth. It now says the pause in warming will last until at least 2017. A glance at the graph will confirm that the world will be cooler than even the coolest scenario predicted.



Its source is impeccable. The line showing world temperatures comes from the Met Office ‘HadCRUT4’ database, which contains readings from more than 30,000 measuring posts. This was added to the 75 and 95 per cent certainty bands to produce the graph by a group that amalgamates the work of 20 climate model centres working for the IPCC.

Predictions of global warming, based on scientists’ forecasts of how fast increasing CO2 levels would cause temperatures to rise, directly led to Britain’s Climate Change Act. This commits the UK to cut emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.

The current Energy Bill is set to increase subsidies for wind turbines to £7.6 billion a year – leading to a combined cost of £110 billion. Motorists will soon see a further 3p per litre rise in the cost of petrol because this now has to contain ‘biofuel’ ethanol.

Many scientists say the pause, and new research into factors such as smoke particles and ocean cycles, has made them rethink what is termed ‘climate sensitivity’ – how much the world will warm for a given level of CO2.

Yesterday Piers Forster, Climate Change Professor at Leeds University, said: ‘The fact that global surface temperatures haven’t risen in the last 15 years, combined with good knowledge of the terms changing climate, make the high estimates unlikely.’

And Professor Judith Curry, head of climate science at the prestigious Georgia Institute of Technology, said: ‘The models are running too hot. The flat trend in global surface temperatures may continue for another decade or two.’

James Annan, of Frontier Research For Global Change, a prominent ‘warmist’, recently said high estimates for climate sensitivity now look ‘increasingly untenable’, with the true figure likely to be about half of the IPCC prediction in its last report in 2007.

Avowed climate sceptics are more unequivocal. Dr David Whitehouse, author of a new report on the pause published on Friday by Lord Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation, said: ‘This changes everything. It means we have much longer to work things out. Global warming should no longer be the main determinant of anyone’s economic or energy policy.’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2294560/The-great-green-1-The-hard-proof-finally-shows-global-warming-forecasts-costing-billions-WRONG-along.html

[_Brackite]

Employers and taxpayers ask Gov. Brown to halt cap and trade

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A group of employers and taxpayers have sent a letter to Gov. Jerry Brown asking that he halt cap and trade “and policies to achieve greenhouse gas emission reductions.” Cap and trade is the state’s fledgling system of trading carbon credits to reduce greenhouse gases under AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.

The AB 32 Implementation Group is a coalition of employers and taxpayer groups forced into compliance with AB 32. But their plea has been ignored by the California Air Resources Board and its director, Mary Nichols, over concerns that AB 32 implementation could bankrupt businesses and harm the state’s own finances.

The group now is asking Brown and CARB to make state policy more cost-effective, better administered and responsive to public concerns. Under AB 32, the governor has the authority to suspend the legislation’s implementation for one year.

But if you read between the lines of the carefully worded letter, it is clear that these employers and taxpayer organizations really fear that CARB has no idea what it is doing as it forges ahead with cap and trade in the brave new world of curbing global warming emissions.

The letter reads:

“The AB 32 Implementation Group would like to highlight that over the past five years, and in particular in the last year, business and industry have submitted numerous public comments on the overall policy aspects of linking with other jurisdictions and on the details of the program to link Quebec in particular, yet we do not see any movement to make linking more cost-effective and more administratively effective (see industry comments on holding limits for example). It is imperative that CARB come down from its ‘full speed ahead’ vision and move to make the reasonable, rational changes to make the linking regulation more cost-effective and more administratively workable.”

That makes sense. Especially since the AB 32 Implementation Group consistently says, “We support climate change policy for California that is coordinated with other western states and ultimately the federal government.”

Higher costs

Numerous studies have shown that California’s cap-and-trade auctions will lead to significantly higher energy costs. California already suffers under high energy costs — piling on even higher costs likely will spur more businesses to leave state.

As the letter hints, an oddity of cap and trade is that Nichols and CARB have fixated on linking with Quebec, the Canadian province.

The letter pointed out: “Linkage with Quebec without first assuring that the market functions properly and that market manipulation protections actually work poses new and unnecessary risks and complications.” No other Canadian province or American state is involved.

The AB 32 Implementation Group explained California’s cap-and-trade program is six times as large as Quebec’s, but Quebec’s carbon price is more than twice as high as California’s. According to the letter, “Linking with Quebec will only make the cost of offsets higher as Quebec industry will have twice the incentive to go after the limited number of offsets, thereby increasing the cost of offsets.”

But AB 32 unequivocally instructs CARB to implement AB 32 in the most cost-effective, technologically feasible manner.

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Link: http://www.calwatchdog.com/2013/03/15/e ... and-trade/

[_Tarski]

piling up in the trash bin that is.

Seriously, how can any one person be so clueless about the state of real science?

[_Res Ipsa]

Were that it was just one person. It's the power of denial.

[_Brackite]

Radicalness of CARB’s long-term plans comes into focus

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SACRAMENTO — While the California Air Resources Board continues to forge ahead like a blind bull in a china shop with its far-reaching climate change plan, the extent of the destruction that could result is beginning to become evident.

At a legislative hearing Tuesday, it became uncomfortably apparent that CARB officials simply do not understand what drives the free market. Unfortunately for California, the agency’s environmentalist supporters and much of the Legislature are in the same boat.

Despite warnings and the many legislative hearings where business and trade associations have detailed serious concerns, CARB has made no changes to its scoping plan or cap-and-trade program. Nothing gets corrected, no in-depth economic analysis is ever completed. The far-reaching agency just continues to move forward with its plan to reshape the state’s economy, appearing to be unaccountable even to the Legislature.

‘Health-based’ standards = zero GHG emissions

The Senate Transportation and Housing Committee conducted another hearing on AB 32′s implementation – this one aimed at light-duty vehicles (cars and light trucks, mini vans, and sport utility vehicles) and the fuels, mostly gas, that they use in California.

AB 32, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, set the 2020 greenhouse gas emissions reduction goal into law.

“In recognition to the threat to our environment, human health, and human society posed by global warming, California enacted AB 32 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly by 2020,” the committee analysis said. “ARB indicates that reducing GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent of 1990 levels by 2050 means completely altering the types of cars Californians drive, and the fuels we use.”

CARB has been heavily pushing the 2050 goals more recently, because as the agency’s Richard Corey admitted, “the last three years have seen the biggest drop in carbon emissions.” California has nearly met its 1990 levels of carbon emissions, and done this without radically changing the standard of living in the state.

In CARB’s cross hairs: all conventional automobiles

But that is apparently not enough.

“California must move toward a zero-based emission system,” air board executive Alberto Ayala said. “These are health-based air quality standards,” he added.

This “health-based standards” is a new phrase for the CARB and its supporters. It was used throughout the hearing.

“Poor air quality is central to asthma, cardiovascular [health problems] and premature deaths,” Ayala said. “Transportation is a significant part of this challenge. The strategy to reduce must focus on this sector.”

While there are other sources of pollution CARB could go after, it is clear that the air board has chosen the automobile as villain number one. Ayala noted “70 percent [of pollution] is particulate matter, and 40 percent is carbon emissions.”

Taking CARB’s activism one step further, Ayala even said the CARB is now “pushing fuel-cell vehicles.”

“Be careful of being seduced by technology,” state Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, warned Ayala. “We can’t set aspirational goals but not expect the private sector to come up with the changes.”

CARB plans on ridding the state of 85 percent of its 22 million internal combustion engine vehicles by 2050 through implementation of its Low Carbon Fuel Standard.

Currently, only 0.0002 percent of vehicles in California use alternative fuel or have hybrid engines, a number acknowledged by several of the transportation experts at the hearing. Hybrids, electric cars and alternative vehicles just don’t sell. They are much more expensive than internal combustion engine vehicles, most are unattractive, and the purchase costs versus savings don’t pencil out on a spreadsheet.

Instead of working with auto manufacturers to help create fuel-efficient and hybrid vehicles people will buy, CARB continues to mandate unrealistic policies and goals.

Low Carbon Fuel Standard to make cost of travel soar

Central to the air board’s policy strategy is the Low Carbon Fuel Standard program, which took effect in 2011 and requires a reduction in “carbon intensity” in all fuel.

CARB calculates emissions in the carbon intensity calculation, but also includes extraction and how the fuel is refined and transported. As part of its calculation, CARB also assigns scores to oil from all over the world. The gasoline produced from it must be mixed with “cleaner” fuels to achieve a carbon reduction.

Showing what a subjective process this really is, the air board includes factors such as environmental-friendliness of the oil-producing country.

The Western States Petroleum Association has a big problem with CARB, and for good reason: The inadequate supply of low carbon intensity fuels and biofuels will very shortly leave oil refiners with no viable compliance options. According to a recent study commissioned by the association, the low carbon fuel standard would produce a steep decline in demand for refined products, particularly gas, resulting in a loss of 20 to 30 percent of the state’s refining capacity by 2017, and up to a 35 percent loss by 2020.

California’s cap-and-trade auction program, according to the WSPA, will increase the cost of making gasoline and diesel up to 69 cents per gallon, depending on the cost of carbon allowances.

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Link: http://www.calwatchdog.com/2013/03/20/r ... nto-focus/


California’s unemployment rate unchanged at 9.8 percent

[_moksha]

Bc, did you notice the black line has stayed consistently within the bounds of the other lines?

Global warming should no longer be the main determinant of anyone’s economic or energy policy.

Is all this opposition driven by a fear that it will somehow affect Hummer sales or required more pollution control?

[_Droopy]

Seriously, how can any one person be so clueless about the state of real science?

Which, for years now, you have made painfully and embarrassingly clear you have no real interest in at all.

[_Brackite]

Bc, did you notice the black line has stayed consistently within the bounds of the other lines?

Global warming should no longer be the main determinant of anyone’s economic or energy policy.

Is all this opposition driven by a fear that it will somehow affect Hummer sales or required more pollution control?

Moksha, Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is Not Pollution.


CO2 is Not a Pollutant: Debunking a Global-Warming Myth

[_bcspace]

But the fact that global surface temperatures have not followed the expected global warming pattern is now widely accepted.

Research by Ed Hawkins of University of Reading shows surface temperatures since 2005 are already at the low end of the range projections derived from 20 climate models and if they remain flat, they will fall outside the models' range within a few years.

"The global temperature standstill shows that climate models are diverging from observations," says David Whitehouse of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

"If we have not passed it already, we are on the threshold of global observations becoming incompatible with the consensus theory of climate change," he says.

Whitehouse argues that whatever has happened to make temperatures remain constant requires an explanation because the pause in temperature rise has occurred despite a sharp increase in global carbon emissions.

Twenty-year hiatus in rising temperatures has climate scientists puzzled

[_Brackite]

From Science Daily:

Climate Sensitivity to Carbon Dioxide More Limited Than Extreme Projections, Research Shows

Nov. 25, 2011 — A new study suggests that the rate of global warming from doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide may be less than the most dire estimates of some previous studies -- and, in fact, may be less severe than projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in 2007.

Authors of the study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation's Paleoclimate Program and published online this week in the journal Science, say that global warming is real and that increases in atmospheric CO2 will have multiple serious impacts.

However, the most Draconian projections of temperature increases from the doubling of CO2 are unlikely.

"Many previous climate sensitivity studies have looked at the past only from 1850 through today, and not fully integrated paleoclimate date, especially on a global scale," said Andreas Schmittner, an Oregon State University researcher and lead author on the Science article. "When you reconstruct sea and land surface temperatures from the peak of the last Ice Age 21,000 years ago -- which is referred to as the Last Glacial Maximum -- and compare it with climate model simulations of that period, you get a much different picture.

"If these paleoclimatic constraints apply to the future, as predicted by our model, the results imply less probability of extreme climatic change than previously thought," Schmittner added.

Scientists have struggled for years trying to quantify "climate sensitivity" -- which is how Earth will respond to projected increases of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The 2007 IPCC report estimated that the air near the surface of Earth would warm on average by 2 to 4.5 degrees (Celsius) with a doubling of atmospheric CO2 from pre-industrial standards. The mean, or "expected value" increase in the IPCC estimates was 3.0 degrees; most climate model studies use the doubling of CO2 as a basic index.

Some previous studies have claimed the impacts could be much more severe -- as much as 10 degrees or higher with a doubling of CO2 -- although these projections come with an acknowledged low probability. Studies based on data going back only to 1850 are affected by large uncertainties in the effects of dust and other small particles in the air that reflect sunlight and can influence clouds, known as "aerosol forcing," or by the absorption of heat by the oceans, the researchers say.

To lower the degree of uncertainty, Schmittner and his colleagues used a climate model with more data and found that there are constraints that preclude very high levels of climate sensitivity.

The researchers compiled land and ocean surface temperature reconstructions from the Last Glacial Maximum and created a global map of those temperatures. During this time, atmospheric CO2 was about a third less than before the Industrial Revolution, and levels of methane and nitrous oxide were much lower. Because much of the northern latitudes were covered in ice and snow, sea levels were lower, the climate was drier (less precipitation), and there was more dust in the air.

All these factor, which contributed to cooling Earth's surface, were included in their climate model simulations.

The new data changed the assessment of climate models in many ways, said Schmittner, an associate professor in OSU's College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. The researchers' reconstruction of temperatures has greater spatial coverage and showed less cooling during the Ice Age than most previous studies.

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