Elisabeth Rosenthal follows in Andrew Revkin's footsteps down the path of corrupted pseudoscience "journalism" for Exxon-Mobil's minion, The New York Times, quoting Monckton and Pielke, Jr.

Well, somebody had to do it, I guess.

Now that Andrew Revkin has gone off to academia (or has he? really?  Dot Earth continues at The New York Times as a platform for the global warming denialists, both the fossil-fuel industry paid variety and the useful idiots), Exxon-Mobil's minion, The New York Times, had to find someone to fill his place, to write crap about real scientists, backed up by quotes from the worst of the worst sort of pseudoscientists like Monckton, who isn't even a climatologist of any stripe, and the infamous Roger Pielke, Jr., who purports to be a political scientist but who spends his time working for the global warming denialists.


Elisabeth, get out of there while you still can.  This article has destroyed your journalistic credibility in one fell swoop.

Your article is crap and you know it.  If you don't know it, then God help you.


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/science/earth/09climate.html


Find Joe Romm's take on this #$%@#@*% at:


http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/09/new-york-times-elisabeth-rosenthal-unbalanced-climate-coverage-ipcc-pachauri/#comment-261606

Climate change to triple Australia fire danger

Climate change to triple Australia fire danger: report

AFP/File – A bushfire burns out of control in the Victoria Alps in southeastern Australia in February 2009. Climate …

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January 28, 2010

SYDNEY (AFP) – Climate change could more than triple the risk of catastrophic wildfires in parts of Australia, a top environmental group warned Thursday, almost a year since savage firestorms that killed 173 people.

Greenpeace warned that, without a new climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, the frequency of severe fire danger in drought-parched southeastern Australia would grow three-fold by 2050.

"Catastrophic" conditions similar to those ahead of February 2009's so-called "Black Saturday" wildfires which killed 173 people in towns around Melbourne would occur once every three years, instead of once in every 33.

"The frequency of catastrophic fire danger could increase more than tenfold in Melbourne, and the number of total fire ban days could triple in Sydney, Adelaide and Canberra by 2050," according to a Greenpeace report entitled "Future Risk."

If targets for emission cuts proposed by world leaders at December's Copenhagen summit were adopted in a new global treaty, southeastern Australia would still face at least a doubling of severe fire risk, Greenpeace said.

"If we do nothing to address climate change we are knowingly placing more lives and property at risk," said Greenpeace CEO Linda Selvey.

According to the report temperatures in Australia had warmed an average 0.9 °C (1.6 °F) since 1950, with the greatest intensification of heat in the country's east, which was accompanied by markedly declining rainfall.

"Hotter, drier weather is a recipe for bushfire disaster in regions of Australia home to the majority of the population," it said, adding that the changing climate had "noticeably" prolonged the annual fire season.

The February 7, 2009, Black Saturday fires were the worst natural disaster in Australia's modern history, with one expert likening their intensity to the energy produced by 1,500 Hiroshima atomic bombs.

More than 2,000 homes were destroyed, killing 173 people and injuring more than 400.

Australia this week reiterated its Copenhagen goal for emissions cuts of between five and 25% of 2000 levels by 2020, depending on commitments by other nations, and said they would be formally submitted to the UN.

Link:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100128/sc_afp/australiaclimatewarmingweatherfire

Wyoming water may become more scarce with climate change

Report: Wyoming water vulnerable to climate change

by MEAD GRUVER, trib.com, January 31, 2010

The mountain snows that replenish most surface water in Wyoming, the fifth-driest state, are vulnerable to climate change and likely to be affected by rising temperatures, a new report says.

The report released this week by the Ruckelshaus Institute of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Wyoming also says downstream water demand is expected to increase in the decades ahead because of regional population growth.

The Ruckelshaus Institute is a think tank for environmental issues. A variety of interests are represented on the institute's board of directors, including environmental groups, industry, academia and government.

Most of Wyoming's surface water originates as mountain snowpack. Climate change can cause snowpack to melt earlier during the springtime, making runoff more challenging to manage as a water source, the report says.

Reservoir managers have the task of striking a balance between flood control and water storage.

"Moreover, an early runoff leads to diminished late-season flows," the report says, "which are crucial to a wide variety of municipal, agricultural, industrial and environmental uses."

The report also points out that Wyoming is located at the headwaters of several river systems, making the state more vulnerable to drought because not much water flows into the state.

Yet higher temperatures intensify drought.

"The amount of temperature increase that we're expecting in and of itself would have some pretty dramatic effects in Wyoming and the West," said Steve Gray, state climatologist and director of the Water Resources Data System.

The report shows that Wyoming needs to take a "realistic view" of climate change in managing its water, Gray said. That means planning for extremes, not just the average amount of water available.
 
"We just plan around that number rather than asking tougher questions in some ways," he said. "What's our worst case?"

More than 70% of Wyoming receives less than 16 inches of precipitation a year. That's not dry enough to qualify as desert, the report said, but still plenty dry.

Compared to precipitation patterns over the past millennium, the 20th century was unusually wet. Long droughts -- some lasting 50 years or more -- have been fairly common in the region over the long run.

With or without climate change, Gray said, Wyoming should expect such patterns to continue.

One way to do that is to build reservoirs. Another, he said, is to conserve water.

Ruckelshaus board members were struck by a variety of studies about how climate change could affect Wyoming, said Indy Burke, a professor and director of the institute.

"They said, 'My god, the citizens need to know this. We need to get this out," she said.

She said more science is needed to find out what else in Wyoming is sensitive to climate change.

Link:  http://www.trib.com/news/state-and-local/article_c80a020e-91b2-5ee5-8459-a83a73d3b5d6.html

Western Australia drought is possibly the worst for the past 750 years

WA drought 'could be worst for 750 years'

by CHALPAT SONT, Western Australia Today, February 9, 2010

Scientists have made a surprising link between climate patterns in Australia and Antarctica.

If you thought the drought affecting south-west WA since the 1970s was extreme, you were right.
But just how extreme has been a matter of contention.

Now, scientists believe it could be the worst of its kind in 750 years, after making an unexpected discovery.
Researchers from the Australian Antarctic Division and Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-operative Research Centre have identified a link between the drought, which began in the early 1970s, and snowfall at a site in East Antarctica over the same period.

In research published in Nature Geoscience, they say the relationship is inverse:  high snowfalls at the Law Dome site correlate with low rain in the South-West.

This is a result of the atmospheric circulation pattern that brings dry, cool air to Australia, while sending warm, moist air to East Antarctica.

However, the high snowfall at Law Dome was unlike any other in the past 750 years, and led the researchers to believe the drought was similarly unusual.

Since the 1970s, there has been a decline of up to 20% in winter rainfall in the South-West and, though the cause of the drought remains unclear, others have pointed to land-use changes, ocean temperatures, air circulation changes and natural variability.

But its severity has been hard to calculate, with weather records going back only about 100 years, and the oldest tree-ring record, 350 years, from a site that has not been affected by the drought.

The researchers found that the snowfall was of a severity expected only once in every 38,000 years.

Adjusting their analysis of ice cores, it still should happen only about every 5400 years.

"It also suggests ... that if the mix of factors that influence [South-West] rainfall over the past century reflects that of the longer term, then the recent drought ... may be similarly unusual," the researchers say.

Lead researcher Tas van Ommen said the results of the study were unexpected.

"We were surprised at first, given the complexity of climate processes, to find such a direct connection between our ice core and the climate of Western Australia," he said.

"By identifying new processes that influence regional Australian climate, this work offers the possibility to improve understanding and reduce uncertainty in future projections of climate change.

"This work underscores the need for long-term records of past climate from sources like ice cores and it illustrates the important role that Antarctic climate processes play globally."

It suggested human influence was likely to have played a role in the drought, Dr van Ommen said.

University of NSW professor Andy Pitman said the study was a "good and bad news story."

"It is good for those policy makers in WA who invested in alternative sources of water based on earlier research by CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology," he said.

"This new science suggests they made a wise decision. It is, of course, less good news for the future of water dependent industries in WA and reinforces the urgent need for global cuts in greenhouse gas emissions."

Monash University professor Neville Nicholls said the researchers may even have underestimated the severity of the drought.

"Since about 1990, snowfall at their site in Antarctica appears to have decreased, but the South-West rainfall has not rebounded as we might have expected from this," he said.

"This indicates that some additional mechanism is affecting either snowfall or the drought. This is not surprising in a time of strong global warming. But we do need to work out these mechanisms."

Link:  http://www.watoday.com.au/environment/climate-change/wa-drought-could-be-worst-for-750-years-20100205-niee.html

U.S. Senator James Inhofe channels Joseph McCarthy

Dear Readers,

Considering the fact that James Inhofe does not have the resident intelligence for writing and punctuating the letter below that bears his signature, one wonders who, in fact, did write this letter.  The fossil-fuel industries are waging an all out immoral war against honest and reputable scientists.  Please take notice and fight back against this in any way you can.


Tenney
 


From Eli Rabett:

Eli thought you might enjoy this example of Climate McCarthyism

“February 03, 2010
Allison C. Lerner, Inspector General
National Science Foundation
Office of Inspector General
4201 Wilson Boulevard
Arlington, VA 22230

Dear Ms. Lerner:

This is a follow-up to my letter of December 2, 2009, and concerns today’s announcement by Penn State University that it has concluded its initial inquiry into possible research misconduct by one of the University’s researchers, Dr. Michael Mann. Penn State’s internal inquiry found further investigation is warranted to determine if Dr. Mann “engaged in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting or reporting research or other scholarly activities.”

While I firmly agree that Penn State’s investigation is warranted and must commence without delay, there are federal laws and policies implicated in this matter, including your “Research Misconduct” regulations, Title 45 CFR Part 689, that go beyond the scope of Penn State’s inquiry. Therefore, in order to have a full and complete accounting of this matter, I request that you now begin a formal investigation of the allegations against Dr. Mann.

Among other laws and regulations, I ask that you investigate compliance with, or violations of, OMB administrative procedures, 2 CFR Part 215 (OMB Circular A-110), in particular 2 CFR §215.36; Freedom of Information Act 5 U.S.C. §552 (NSF Regulation, 45 CFR Part 612); NSF guidelines implementing OMB information quality guidelines (515 Guidelines); Federal False Claims Act, 18 U.S.C. §287, and 31 U.S.C. §§3729-33; and Federal False Statements Act, 18 U.S.C §1001. Finally, given that Dr. Mann was at the University of Virginia from 1999 until 2005, I also request that you inquire whether his activities at the University of Virginia are implicated in this matter and within your jurisdiction.

Sincerely,

James M. Inhofe
Ranking Member
Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works”

Link:  http://community.nytimes.com/comments/dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/manns-fate/?permid=132#comment132

Richard Black of the BBC: Distorted view through the climate gates

Distorted view through the climate gates

Richard Black, BBC environmental reporter, BBC News online, 2 February 2010 

Much has been written -- not least on this website -- and much more surely will be written over the coming months about supposed inconsistencies, errors, misjudgements and poor practice among climate scientists.

How many "scandals" do we now have with the suffix "-gate" attached to them? At least five, by my count, with the most embarrassing surely being the projection that the mighty Himalayan glaciers could largely be gone within a human generation.
The latest -gate -- detailed in a series of articles in The Guardian by environment journalist Fred Pearce -- concerns a set of temperature data from China that was used in a 1990 paper in Nature to estimate the likely impact of progressive urbanisation on temperatures recorded at weather stations.

The paper is one of several cited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in reaching its conclusion that:

"Urban heat island effects are real but local, and have not biased the large-scale trends."

The implication of The Guardian's article is that Chinese scientists contributing data for that paper had not taken as much care as they should have done to document and allow for the fact that some of the weather stations had been relocated over the course of the study period, possibly affecting their readings; and that at some stage the paper's lead author, Professor Phil Jones, had been made aware of the issue by an independent UK researcher, Douglas Keenan, but did not seek to publicise or remedy it.

As anyone following the -gate trail will know, Professor Jones is the scientist at the centre of the original "Climategate" -- November's e-mail theft from the University of East Anglia.

The point of this post isn't to go once more over well-trodden ground, but to raise a simple but crucial point.
Like all the other noisy -gates, this latest one throws up two questions: was scientific best practice followed, and is there anything here that affects the basic picture of climate science?
Whatever the answers to those may be -- and Professor Jones' University of East Anglia has issued a rebuttal covering key points of The Guardian's article -- the important point to make is that they are separate questions.

In some circles, every single -gate "relevation" has been followed by a ritualised fanfare claiming that the picture of climate warming through rising greenhouse gases concentrations has now been "fatally undermined," or some similar phrase.

Journalists with an eye for old-fashioned concepts such as balance, like Fred Pearce, are careful to avoid making that conclusion.

He writes that this latest episode...

"...does not change the global picture of temperature trends. There is plenty of evidence of global warming, not least from oceans far from urban influences. A review of recent studies published online in December by David Parker of the Met Office concludes that, even allowing for Jones's new data, 'global near-surface temperature trends have not been greatly affected by urban warming trends'."

He could also have cited the body of evidence from the satellite record, which also shows a clear warming trend.

In a paper published in the journal Energy and Environment [pdf link] in which he detailed his concerns about the 1990 conclusions, Doug Keenan made the same point:

"None of this means that the conclusion of the IPCC is incorrect."

In an interview with the Press Association (PA) about The Guardian's article, Phil Jones says he stands by the conclusion of the 1990 paper, not least because it was backed up by other studies, including papers in 2007 and 2008 that used a more detailed Chinese dataset.

Below is a graph comparing the 1990 (Jones et al.) and 2007 (Li et al.) graphs.
He goes on to say:

"It makes me quite worried people are beginning to doubt the climate has warmed up."

And clearly some people do doubt that -- many of you tell me so, in great detail, on every post I write, whatever it deals with -- and judging by your comments, that's partly because some of you believe that all climate scientists are as bent as a... well, a hockey stick might be a good simile here.

It is a free world; and if you really do hold that view, then presumably it makes sense to jump the divide between the two questions I raised earlier, and conclude that as all climate scientists are dodgy, so is all climate data.

But I would argue that keeping the questions separate is of absolute and vital importance.

How scientists and the institutions of science behave is an important issue, no doubt about it -- for evidence, look no further than the latest developments on the MMR saga, which sees The Lancet retracting the decade-old paper that sparked all the fuss -- and Phil Jones tells PA in his interview:

"We do need to make more of the data available, I fully accept that."

But what matters far, far more than the nuances of climate scientists' behaviour is whether the climate is warming, and if it is, what is driving that warming.

Those are questions crucial for humanity's future, because if the IPCC's projections become reality, substantial swathes of the global population will find themselves living in much more straitened circumstances than they face at present.

If the scientific case for greenhouse warming crumbles, so be it; but I'd suggest we should beware of assuming it is crumbling simply because a few scientists or a few scientific papers or a few IPCC reviewers have been seen to fall short of the highest standards.

Link:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2010/02/much_has_been_written.html

"Heavy snowfall in a warming world" by Dr. Jeff Masters in his Wunderblog

Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog

by JeffMasters,  February 8, 2010

A major new winter storm is headed east over the U.S., today, and threatens to dump a foot or more of snow on Philadelphia, New York City, and surrounding regions Tuesday and Wednesday. Philadelphia is still digging out from its second top-ten snowstorm of recorded history to hit the city this winter, and the streets are going to begin looking like canyons if this week's snowstorm adds a significant amount of snow to the incredible 28.5" that fell during "Snowmageddon" last Friday and Saturday. Philadelphia has had two snowstorms exceeding 23" this winter. According to the National Climatic Data Center, the return period for a 22+ inch snow storm is once every 100 years -- and we've had two 100-year snow storms in Philadelphia this winter. It is true that if the winter pattern of jet stream location, sea surface temperatures, etc., are suitable for a 100-year storm to form, this will increase the chances of a second such storm occurring that same year, and thus the odds of having two 100-year storms the same year are not 1 in 10,000. Still, the two huge snowstorms this winter in the Mid-Atlantic are definitely a very rare event one should see only once every few hundred years and is something that has not occurred since modern records began in 1870. The situation is similar for Baltimore and Washington, DC. According to the National Climatic Data Center, the expected return period in the Washington, DC/Baltimore region for snowstorms with more than 16 inches of snow is about once every 25 years. This one-two punch of two major Nor'easters in one winter with 16+ inches of snow is unprecedented in the historical record for the region, which goes back to the late 1800s.


Figure 1. Cars buried in Philadelphia by "Snowmageddon." Image credit: wunderphotographer TragicHipster.

Top 9 snowstorms on record for Philadelphia:

1. 30.7", Jan 7-8, 1996
2. 28.5", Feb 5-6, 2010 (Snowmageddon)
3. 23.2", Dec 19-20, 2009 (Snowpocalypse)
4. 21.3", Feb 11-12, 1983
5. 21.0", Dec 25-26, 1909
6. 19.4", Apr 3-4, 1915
7. 18.9", Feb 12-14, 1899
8. 16.7", Jan 22-24, 1935
9. 15.1", Feb 28-Mar 1, 1941

The top 10 snowstorms on record for Baltimore:

1. 28.2", Feb 15-18, 2003
2. 26.5", Jan 27-29, 1922
3. 24.8", Feb 5-6, 2010 (Snowmageddon)
4. 22.8", Feb 11-12, 1983
5. 22.5", Jan 7-8, 1996
6. 22.0", Mar 29-30, 1942
7. 21.4", Feb 11-14, 1899
8. 21.0", Dec 19-20, 2009 (Snowpocalypse)
9. 20.0", Feb 18-19, 1979
10. 16.0", Mar 15-18, 1892

The top 10 snowstorms on record for Washington, DC:

1. 28.0", Jan 27-28, 1922
2. 20.5", Feb 11-13, 1899
3. 18.7", Feb 18-19, 1979
4. 17.8" Feb 5-6, 2010 (Snowmageddon)
5. 17.1", Jan 6-8, 1996
6. 16.7", Feb 15-18, 2003
7. 16.6", Feb 11-12, 1983
8. 16.4", Dec 19-20, 2009 (Snowpocalypse)
9. 14.4", Feb 15-16, 1958
10. 14.4", Feb 7, 1936

Heavy snow events--a contradiction to global warming theory?
Global warming skeptics regularly have a field day whenever a record snow storm pounds the U.S., claiming that such events are inconsistent with a globe that is warming. If the globe is warming, there should, on average, be fewer days when it snows, and thus fewer snow storms. However, it is possible that if climate change is simultaneously causing an increase in the ratio of "snowstorms with very heavy snow" to "storms with ordinary amounts of snow", we could actually see an increase in very heavy snowstorms in some portions of the world. There is evidence that this is happening for winter storms in the Northeast U.S. -- the mighty Nor'easters like the "Snowmageddon" storm of February 5-6, 2010, and "Snowpocalypse" of December 19, 2009. Let's take a look at the evidence. There are two requirements for a record snow storm:

(1) A near-record amount of moisture in the air (or a very slow moving storm).
(2) Temperatures cold enough for snow.

It's not hard at all to get temperatures cold enough for snow in a world experiencing global warming. 

According to the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, the globe warmed 0.74 °C (1.3 °F) over the past 100 years. There will still be colder than average winters in a world that is experiencing warming, with plenty of opportunities for snow. The more difficult ingredient for producing a record snowstorm is the requirement of near-record levels of moisture. Global warming theory predicts that global precipitation will increase, and that heavy precipitation events -- the ones most likely to cause flash flooding -- will also increase. This occurs because as the climate warms, evaporation of moisture from the oceans increases, resulting in more water vapor in the air. According to the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, water vapor in the global atmosphere has increased by about 5% over the 20th century and 4% since 1970. This extra moisture in the air will tend to produce heavier snowstorms, assuming it is cold enough to snow. Groisman et al. (2004) found a 14% increase in heavy (top 5%) and 20% increase in very heavy (top 1%) precipitation events in the U.S. over the past 100 years, though mainly in spring and summer. However, the authors did find a significant increase in winter heavy precipitation events have occurred in the Northeast U.S. This was echoed by Changnon et al. (2006), who found, "The temporal distribution of snowstorms exhibited wide fluctuations during 1901-2000, with downward 100-yr trends in the lower Midwest, South, and West Coast. Upward trends occurred in the upper Midwest, East, and Northeast, and the national trend for 1901-2000 was upward, corresponding to trends in strong cyclonic activity."

The strongest cold-season storms are likely to become stronger and more frequent for the U.S.
The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) began as a presidential initiative in 1989 and was mandated by Congress in the Global Change Research Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-606), which called for "a comprehensive and integrated United States research program which will assist the Nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change." This program has put out some excellent peer-reviewed science on climate change that, in my view, is as authoritative as the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. In 2009, the USGCRP put out its excellent U.S. Climate Impacts Report, summarizing the observed and forecast impacts of climate change on the U.S. The report's main conclusion about cold season storms was "Cold-season storm tracks are shifting northward and the strongest storms are likely to become stronger and more frequent."

The report's more detailed analysis: "Large-scale storm systems are the dominant weather phenomenon during the cold season in the United States. Although the analysis of these storms is complicated by a relatively short length of most observational records and by the highly variable nature of strong storms, some clear patterns have emerged (Kunkel et al., 2008).

Storm tracks have shifted northward over the last 50 years as evidenced by a decrease in the frequency of storms in mid-latitude areas of the Northern Hemisphere, while high-latitude activity has increased. There is also evidence of an increase in the intensity of storms in both the mid- and high-latitude areas of the Northern Hemisphere, with greater confidence in the increases occurring in high latitudes (Kunkel et al., 2008). The northward shift is projected to continue, and strong cold season storms are likely to become stronger and more frequent, with greater wind speeds and more extreme wave heights." The study also noted that we should expect an increase in lake-effect snowstorms over the next few decades. Lake-effect snow is produced by the strong flow of cold air across large areas of relatively warmer ice-free water. The report says, "As the climate has warmed, ice coverage on the Great Lakes has fallen. The maximum seasonal coverage of Great Lakes ice decreased at a rate of 8.4% per decade from 1973 through 2008, amounting to a roughly 30% decrease in ice coverage. This has created conditions conducive to greater evaporation of moisture and thus heavier snowstorms. Among recent extreme lake-effect snow events was a February 2007, 10-day storm total of over 10 feet of snow in western New York state. Climate models suggest that lake-effect snowfalls are likely to increase over the next few decades. In the longer term, lake-effect snows are likely to decrease as temperatures continue to rise, with the precipitation then falling as rain."

Commentary
Of course, both climate change contrarians and climate change scientists agree that no single weather event can be blamed on climate change. However, one can "load the dice" in favor of events that used to be rare -- or unheard of -- if the climate is changing to a new state. It is quite possible that the dice have been loaded in favor of more intense Nor'easters for the U.S. Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, thanks to the higher levels of moisture present in the air due to warmer global temperatures. It's worth mentioning that heavy snow storms should be getting increasingly rare for the extreme southern portion of the U.S. in coming decades. There's almost always high amounts of moisture available for a potential heavy snow in the South -- just not enough cold air. With freezing temperatures expected to decrease and the jet stream and associated storm track expected to move northward, the extreme southern portion of the U.S. should see a reduction in both heavy and ordinary snow storms in the coming decades.

The CapitalClimate blog has a nice perspective on "Snowmageddon," and Joe Romm of climateprogress.org has some interesting things to say about snowstorms in a warming climate.

References
Changnon, S. A., D. Changnon, and T. R. Karl. 2006. Temporal and spatial characteristics of snowstorms in the contiguous United States, J. Appl. Meteor. Climatol., 45, 1141-1155.

Groisman, P. Y., R. W. Knight, T. R. Karl, D. R. Easterling, B. Sun, and J. H. Lawrimore. 2004. Contemporary changes of the hydrological cycle over the contiguous United States: Trends derived from in situ observations, J. Hydrometeor., 5, 64-85.

Kunkel, K. E., P. D. Bromirski, H. E. Brooks, T. Cavazos, A. V. Douglas, D. R. Easterling, K. A. Emanuel, P. Ya. Groisman, G. J. Holland, T. R. Knutson, J. P. Kossin, P. D. Komar, D. H. Levinson, and R. L. Smith. 2008. Observed changes in weather and climate extremes. In Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate: Regions of Focus: North America, Hawaii, Caribbean, and U.S. Pacific Islands [T. R. Karl, G.A. Meehl, C.D. Miller, S.J. Hassol, A.M. Waple and W.L. Murray (eds.)]. Synthesis and Assessment Product 3.3. U.S. Climate Change Science Program, Washington, DC, pp. 35-80.

Link:  http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1427

Dr Richard Alley puts paid to wmar's ridiculous industry-bought-and-paid-for pseudoscience on Dot Earth

Reality check on old ice, climate and CO2

by ANDREW C. REVKIN, February 8, 2010

Richard Alley’s name has been thrown around a bit by bloggers asserting that ice-core records from Greenland show  that carbon dioxide has scant, if any, influence on climate. Dr. Alley, a glaciologist and climate scientist at Penn State, is a longtime contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, author of a nice history of ice and climate, “ The Two-Mile Time Machine,” and — as many Dot Earth readers are aware — a teacher with musical and terpsichorean talents (see the YouTube video below for his orbital dance explaining how ice-age cycles help show the amplifying power of greenhouse gases).

Apture™

There have been repeated references to his work here by skeptics of human-driven warming, most notably by “wmar.” Here’s an example (link to full comment is here):

The ice tells us about the past, and from Dr. Alley of the I.P.C.C., it is entirely clear that the carbon/temperature link is either a fallacy or negligible. Unlike the I.P.C.C. or any such pro AGW group, the ice cores have no emotions or agendas and simply are what they are … let’s have a look shall we?
WattsUpWithThat…

I sent a query to Dr. Alley about such interpretations of his work and the ice-core record and he sent a reply, the heart of which is pasted below. Where he refers to  GISP2, he’s describing a particular ice core extracted during what was called “Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2.”

First off, no single temperature record from anywhere can prove or disprove global warming, because the temperature is a local record, and one site is not the whole world. One of the lessons drawn from comparing Greenland to Antarctica and many other places is that some of the temperature changes (the ice-age cycling) are very widespread and shared among most records, but other of the temperature changes (sometimes called millennial, or abrupt, or Younger-Dryas-type) are antiphased between Greenland and the south, and still other temperature changes may be unrelated between different places (one anomalously cold year in Greenland does not tell you the temperature anomaly in Australia or Peru). After scientists have done the hard work of working out these relations, it is possible to use one ice-core record to represent broader regions IF you restrict consideration to the parts that are widely coherent, so it is O.K. to plot a smoothed version of an Antarctic temperature record against CO2 over long times and discuss the relation as if it is global, but a lot of background is required.

Second, although the central Greenland ice-core records may provide the best paleoclimatic temperature records available, multiple parameters confirm the strong temperature signal, and multiple cores confirm the widespread nature of the signal, the data still contain a lot of noise over short times (snowdrifts are real, among other things). An isotopic record from one site is not purely a temperature record at that site, so care is required to interpret the signal and not the noise. An extensive scientific literature exists on this topic, and I believe we are pretty good in the community at properly qualifying our statements to accord with the underlying scientific literature; the blogospheric misuses of the GISP2 isotopic data that I have seen are not doing so, and are making errors of interpretation as a result.

Thirdly, demonstration that there have been large climate changes in the past without humans in no way demonstrates that humans are not now responsible. Many people have died naturally but murder still exists; it is up to the police to learn whether a given mortality was natural or not, and up to climate science to learn what is causing ongoing changes (and we have good confidence that most of what is happening to climatic global average surface temperature is being caused by humanity now). Similarly, demonstration that life, and humans, survived warmer temperatures in the past in no way shows that warmer temperatures in the future are good for us. If you don’t care about humans and other things with us here, making a big change in climate might be an interesting experiment. Evolution does respond to climate change and produce novel results. I just happen to have a personal bias (shared, I believe, by the majority of the six-plus billion people on the planet) that we should ask what is best for humanity, and pursue that. An opinion, surely, and not purely scientific, but that’s my bias.

So, what do we get from GISP2? Alone, not an immense amount. With the other Greenland ice cores (which demonstrate that the GISP2 record is quite good and reproducible), and compared to additional records from elsewhere, an immense amount.

> More sunshine from orbital changes produces warming. The magnitude looks consistent with our understanding of the climate system.

> Some of the “wiggles” in temperature (such as the Little Ice Age signal) correlate with changes in solar output. The beryllium-10 record provides an imperfect but useful estimate of the past variations of solar output, after correction for effects of magnetic-field variation on beryllium-10 production. The resulting solar fluctuations have been small over the times of good climate records, with small climate response, as expected. Again, there is no solid evidence for any weirdness, special sensitivity of climate to the sun, or large solar variations, but instead a generally good match to expected behavior of the climate system. (I’m among those who have looked very hard to find weirdness, too.)

> Nothing else really weird appears in forcings of climate change. No major changes are found in space dust, which remains rare enough that it cannot have been very important. Large changes in cosmic rays are documented in response to magnetic-field variations (the Laschamp event of about 40,000 years ago is especially prominent) with no corresponding change in climate, so any cosmic-ray influence on the climate must be very small (a weak correlation can be obscured by noise; a strong control is almost always visible “by eye,” and clearly is absent). Volcanic eruptions and local climate response are recorded, and again appear consistent with expectations of climate science. There may be small but interesting time-variations in eruptions, but the record is almost entirely one of “noise”–if volcanoes could get organized they could be very important agents of climate change, but they aren’t organized. (The recent work of Huybers and Langmuir suggests that on ice-age time scales, the loading and unloading of the planet by ice growth/shrinkage and sea-level fall/rise may weakly organize the volcanoes, but not a lot, and with nothing interesting for our time.)

Climate is surely a lot of things. The data show that the sun’s variations have been small over the times we care about, the climate responds to variations in sunshine caused by orbital changes, but these are slow. CO2 matters a lot. Volcanoes make “noise.” With those in your pocket, you’re a long way to understanding changes in Earth’s climate—not done, but well on your way.

The abrupt-climate-change story remains interesting, though. Today, the salty north Atlantic waters sink before they freeze in the winter. The data indicate that at times in the past, the north Atlantic was fresher so the waters froze before they sank. The resulting wintertime cooling in the north Atlantic was rather severe, and the influences far from the north Atlantic included a general southward shift of the tropical circulations and drying of monsoonal and northern-tropical regions where billions now live. The IPCC gives >90% chance that the melting of Greenland’s ice and other changes in the future will not be fast enough to trigger such a discontinuity over the next century, but >90% is not necessarily 100%. The implications, that slowing down or stopping the melting may buy insurance against a rare but catastrophic outcome, are interesting.

So, using GISP2 data to argue against global warming is, well, stupid, or misguided, or misled, or something, but surely not scientifically sensible. And, using GISP2 data within the larger picture of climate science demonstrates that our scientific understanding is good, supports our expectation of global warming, but raises the small-chance-of-big-problem issue that in turn influences the discussion of optimal human response.

 Link:  http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/08/richard-alley-on-old-ice-climate-and-co2/

China is eating the planet, Part III: $60b Aussie coal deal inked

$60b Aussie coal deal inked

by Wan Zhihong, China Daily, February x, 2010

Australian coal and iron ore company Resourcehouse said over the weekend it had signed a record $60 billion coal supply deal with Chinese power stations, a move analysts said underscored Chinese companies' growing demand for energy to fuel the country's economic development.

Resourcehouse will supply 30 million tons of coal annually over 20 years to China Power International Development Ltd, a unit of major power producer China Power Investment Corp (CPI), Clive Palmer, chairman of the Australian company, said on Saturday.

The deal with CPI is Australia's biggest export contract, Palmer was quoted by Reuters as saying, adding that coal will be developed from a major new project in Australia's Queensland state.

The contract marks how Chinese power companies are accelerating their efforts to secure overseas coal supply for further growth, said Han Xiaoping, chief information officer of energy portal China5e.com.

"With such a long-term contract, Chinese companies can have access to sustainable supply that is beneficial to their development," Han said.

China's power consumption is expected to rise 7 percent this year, in line with the anticipated economic growth rate of 8%, according to the State Electricity Regulatory Commission (SERC). Such growth will in turn boost the country's demand for coal, Han said.

Currently, China's coal imports come mainly from Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam and Indonesia. New coal imports from Australia will also diversify the country's coal supplies, which will further ensure the country's energy security, he said.

Coal fuels about 70% of China's primary energy consumption, with the country becoming a net coal importer for the first time last year, according to the National Energy Administration (NEA).

Lin Boqiang, director of the China Center for Energy Economics Research at Xiamen University, said that besides signing more long-term contracts, Chinese companies should also be more involved in developing overseas coal mines.

"We should learn the lesson from Chinese steel makers, which are relying too much on overseas iron ore," he said.

Rising coal prices in the domestic market are another reason for Chinese companies' growing attention on overseas coal resources, analysts said.

Domestic coal prices are currently higher than those in the international market and it is natural for Chinese power companies to set their sights on foreign suppliers, said an industry insider who did not want to be named.

Chinese power companies may also incur losses this year due to hikes in contract coal prices, said Xue Jing, director of the statistics and information department under the China Electricity Council.

"The industry is expected to see losses this year. Some thermal power plants have already plunged into the red in January," Xue said.

The contradiction between market-based coal prices and government-capped electricity tariffs is also a main reason behind the losses. Faced with rising coal prices, a number of power companies, especially those in southern China, have increased their use of imported coal, she said.

International coal prices had dropped sharply amid the financial crisis but they have also started to firm up with the global economic recovery gaining ground, she said.

LNG imports

China is also set to import more liquefied natural gas (LNG) and build more LNG terminals to meet its rising energy demand, said NEA head Zhang Guobao yesterday.

Related readings: $40b Australia LNG deal lapses  $5b loan-for-oil deal inked with Kazakhstan $25b crude deal inked with Russia Pacts inked to expand direct links Joint fund, energy deals inked with Venezuela

The country will build LNG receiving terminals in Qingdao of Shandong province and Zhuhai of Guangdong province this year. It will speed up development of natural gas fields in the central and western regions, as well as those offshore, he said.

The country imported about 3.5 million tons or 500 million cubic meters of natural gas last year, which is equal to nearly 6% of total consumption, he said.

Domestic companies should take advantage of the LNG oversupply on the international market to secure more long-term overseas supplies, Zhang said.

China is now importing the resource from countries including Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Qatar and Papua New Guinea.

Link:  http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-02/08/content_9440629.htm

CRU e-mails hacking investigation update: Were the files available on a public ftp site?

Climate e-mails: Were they really hacked or just sitting in cyberspace?

Slack security or subversion at the university may have led to 'unintentional sharing,' making the police investigation pointless

• by David Leigh, Charles Arthur, Rob Evans and Fred Pearce, The Guardian, 4 February 2010

Pretended hacker surrounded by computers in an hidden location. Photograph: Corbis

More than two months after the moment that thousands of confidential emails, documents and computer code from the University of East Anglia (UEA) was released online it remains a mystery who was behind the hack.

Even Sir David King, the government's former chief scientist, remains confused. This week, he sought to blame the leak on a foreign intelligence agency, only to admit later he had no evidence.

The university called in police last November, insisting they were victims of a criminal "theft" of data. Under Superintendent Julian Gregory, a group was pulled together from the counter-terrorism squad and Scotland Yard's electronic crimes unit, which also included two officers from the national domestic extremism team who have expertise in pursuing "climate extremists."

So far, the police investigation has got nowhere. It is not even clear whether the crime of computer data interception has actually occurred. What if the hacker was given a legitimate password? What if the data was accidentally open to public access?

The known facts are these. Over the weekend starting Friday 13 November 2009, someone copied files from a backup server at the UEA's Climate Research Unit (CRU) in Norwich. They were then posted anonymously on the internet and various bloggers were alerted.

This collage of 'marooned' climate sceptics -- including Senator James Inhofe and Dr Patrick Michaels -- was sent as an attachment with one of the leaked documents. It was originally sent to Phil Jones in 2007 by the US scientist Thomas Peterson. An editorial from Nature was attached. It read: 'The IPCC report has served a useful purpose in removing the last ground from under the sceptics' feet, leaving them looking marooned and ridiculous'
Within days, their contents spread around the world and were being hailed by CRU's enemies as evidence of anything from poor science to a full-blown criminal conspiracy.

There were 4,660 files in various folders: 3,587 were documents, raw data and code. Some that list tree-ring data are dated back to to 1991. Another 1,073 were emails, dating from 1996 to 12 November 2009.

King suggested earlier this week that these files must have been collected by a highly sophisticated organisation from different places over many years. That is not correct. Nor was the selection of material skilfully arranged to pick out embarrassing items.

UAE has confirmed that all of this material was simply sitting in an archive on a single backup CRU server, available to be copied.

The Guardian has carried out a detailed analysis of the emails and documents.

The emails appear to have been chosen by targeting the backups of a few key personnel wihtin CRU – the director Prof Phil Jones, his deputy Dr Keith Briffa, Dr Tim Osborn and Dr Mike Hulme. Although there are dozens of staff within CRU, only 66 of the 1,073 of the email messages were not directly sent to or from those four people.

The emails may have been filtered by using a few simple scientifically pertinent search words such as "Yamal" – a series of tree ring data from Siberia – or emails directed to US addresses. But many are completely innocuous, or indeed show the climate researchers in a good light, holding rigorous internal debates.

The leaked file was called FOIA.zip and one posting gave a [fake] email address at "foia.org". An abbreviation often used for the US Freedom of Information Act, it suggests again that the leaker was familiar with the attempts by US bloggers and others to get release of tree ring and similar data. Was the leaker American? Was he or she one of the regular readers of the blogs?

These are questions the police now appear to be asking, to judge by their current round of interviews, using the rather limited tools of overseas phone calls and formal email questionnaires.

On Tuesday, 17 November 2009, the leaked data was passed anonymously to the small group who, for some time, had been targeting CRU and its director Phil Jones. The technique involved hacking into the server of climate science blog RealClimate, and then extruding the material via a series of exotic foreign "proxy" servers.

This, and the timing immediately before UN's Copenhagen climate summit, has aroused intense suspicions among some. Could a corporation be behind the hack? While the fallout from the hack did not have a direct effect on the Copenhagen negotiations, its timing ensured maximum publicity.

It was also well-timed to influence US Senate discussions on a climate change bill. Such a manoeuvre would be consistent with the well-known "stealth" agenda of lobbyists of using citizens groups to spearhead opposition to both health care reform and climate legislation during 2009.

The biggest blog involved was California weatherman Anthony Watts' WattsUpWithThat (WUWT). Watts previously had a book published by the right-wing Heartland Institute, financed by ExxonMobil until 2006. He claims poorly sited US weather stations could in theory be skewing temperature data, although a recent analysis using his data found this was not the case.

WUWT's moderator is Charles Rotter, whose San Francisco flatmate is Steve Mosher, an "open-source software developer," and co-author of an excitable instant book on "climategate."

Information also went that first day to the more technical Climate Audit site of former Toronto mining consultant Stephen McIntyre.

Others in the loop later included Illinois aeronautical engineer Patrick Condon's site the Air Vent and Warren Meyer's Coyote Blog.

The very first release was a sort of prank. NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt in New York, an opponent of the sceptics, says that at 6:20 a.m. his time, someone tried to upload the files onto his own RealClimate website via a Turkish server.

The hacker seems to have used a technique called "privilege escalation vulnerability" to become an administrator, rather than an ordinary user of the site.

Schmidt says the hacker "disabled access from the legitimate users, and uploaded a file FOIA.zip to our server. They then created a draft post."

It read as follows: "We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents. Hopefully it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it. This is a limited time offer, download now: HYPERLINK "http://ftp.tomcity.ru/incoming/free/FOI2009.zip" \t "_blank" http://ftp.tomcity.ru/incoming/free/FOI2009.zip."

There followed 20 "samples" with headline phrases from the emails such as "1059664704.txt * Mann: 'dirty laundry'" and "1075403821.txt * Jones: Daly death 'cheering news.' " John Daly was a sceptic whose death the embattled Jones appeared to welcome.

Schmidt swiftly spotted the hack and took it down. He also alerted CRU in Norwich. But even as he did that, a cryptic comment appeared on McIntyre's site. "A miracle has happened," it said, providing a link via the RealClimate website which immediately led to four unidentified downloads. McIntyre says he never noticed this posting at the time, and like all the other bloggers, denies all knowledge of its origin.

As dawn broke in California, the link to the Russian server was next posted to WUWT, where Rotter alerted Watts. Awaiting approval to put it on the site, Rotter says he gave a CD copy to Mosher, who began poring over its contents.

Mosher called him in Toronto, says McIntyre. "I couldn't believe my ears. Mosh ... asked me to confirm emails attributed to me – which I did. They didn't give me the email link." Links were next posted to the Air Vent via a Saudi server, and to Meyer's Coyote Blog in Arizona.

Not until 19 November 2009 did a key email arrive for McIntyre from England. It was from his own contact at UEA, the isotope specialist Paul Dennis.

With the subject line "Interesting!", it attached the text of an alert from Dennis's own head of department at Norwich. This warned that "climate change sceptics" had obtained and posted up a "large volume of files and emails," and urged colleagues to check for viruses.

The bloggers say this gave them the confirmation they had been waiting for. "These actions reassured Mosher that the files were genuine," explains McIntyre.

Mosher says he also received a posting direct from the secret leaker, complaining that nothing was happening. He replied, he says: "A lot is happening behind the scenes. It is not being ignored. Much is being co-ordinated among major players and the media. Thank you very much. You will notice the beginnings of activity on other sites now. Here soon to follow."

But McIntyre was meanwhile guarded with his source in Norwich. He emailed him back: "I haven't seen such a website. You'd think there'd be discussion on the blogs of something like that. I'll definitely stay tuned!!" Only after the bloggers had launched their great scoop did he inform Dennis.

The use of foreign servers proved to be a red herring. The Mail on Sunday claimed the Russians must therefore be behind it, and King speculated about a "highly sophisticated" cyber attack. In fact the use of so-called "open proxy" servers to remain anonymous is on page one of any whistleblowers' manual.

A programme called TOR, for example, can be downloaded which will automatically switch between a random variety of servers. Digital forensic examination of the archive of emails and documents suggests that it was first created around 30 September 2009, and subsequently added to during October and finally in November – when one of Osborn's sets of program code was added – just ahead of the full-blown leak.

Significantly, that analysis suggests that the archive was created on a machine running five hours behind GMT, which would put it on the east coast of North America.

The leaker therefore knew something about computers, just as they knew something about climate science. But it didn't require the skills of Government Communications Headquarters or a foreign intelligence agency, as has been suggested. The hacking of the RealClimate blog exploited the fact that its wordpress platform has security holes well known to hackers.

Some commentators point to a previous pattern of leaks that is strikingly similar to what happened in November. On 24 July 2009, McIntyre says he received a freedom of information (FOI) refusal from CRU. He announced it on his website. The next day McIntyre announced that he had got hold of a mass of data.
He was initially coy about it. He said: "Folks, guess what. I'm now in possession of a CRU version giving data for every station in their station list."

The next day he said: "I learned that the Met Office/CRU had identified the mole. They are now aware that there has in fact been a breach of security … My guess is that they will not make the slightest effort to discipline the mole."

This was a tease. There was no human "mole," just a security breach. Rotter in San Francisco later blogged that "In late July I discovered they had left station data versions from 2003 and 1996 on their server without web page links but accessible all the same. They were stale versions of the requested data ... just sitting in cyberspace waiting for someone to download."

McIntyre later admitted that "I downloaded from the public CRU ftp site ... No hacking was involved".

David Holland, a British engineer who had been making FOI requests, says he too found CRU files accidentally open. In December 2008, he notified the university that "the search engine on your home page is broken and falling through to a directory." They thanked him and said it was caused by a "misconfiguration of the webserver." Holland says he didn't download anything since he knew it could be traced back to his computer.
 
After the July incident, perhaps CRU failed to batten down the hatches, either through technical failings or because someone inside was subverting the efforts. So what happened in November?

Rotter blogged his theory last year. "In the past I have worked at organisations where the computer network grew organically in a disorganised fashion. Security policies often fail as users take advantage of shortcuts ... one of these is to share files using an ftp server ... This can lead to unintentional sharing with the rest of the internet."

He added that files were perhaps put "in an ftp directory which was on the same central processing unit as the external webserver, or even worse, was on a shared driver somewhere to which the webserver had permissions to access. In other words, if you knew where to look, it was publicly available."

If this hypothesis turns out to be true, UEA may end up looking foolish. For there will be no one to arrest.

Link:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/04/climate-change-email-hacker-police-investigation

Skeptical Science: Working out future sea level rise from the past

Working out future sea level rise from the past

by John Cook, Skeptical Science, February 9, 2010

Predicting future sea level rise is tough. A growing contributor to sea level rise is ice sheets that break off into the ocean. However, ice sheet dynamics are non-linear and difficult to predict. The IPCC 4th Assessment Report essentially ignores ice sheet dynamics, predicting sea level rise of 18 to 59 cm by 2100. More recent research accounting for accelerating ice sheets predict sea level rise of 75 cm to 2 metres by 2100 (Vermeer 2009,Pfeffer 2008). Even these latest predictions admit they may not fully predict the non-linear aspect of ice sheet dynamics. However, there is another way to determine future sea level rise that neatly sidesteps the complexities of non-linear dynamics. Look at how sea level has responded to temperature change in the past.

The last interglacial around 125,000 years ago is a period of special interest. The Earth's orbital eccentricity was more than twice the current value, meaning the orbit was more elliptical. This caused warmer summer temperatures than current conditions. Sea surface temperatures at the equator were about 2°C warmer than pre-industrial levels. Ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica find polar temperatures were about 3 to 5°C warmer than today.

Thus the last interglacial provides an insight into where our climate is currently headed over the next century and beyond. A global compilation of sea level indicators from reefs, corals and sediments were used to estimate global sea level during this period. The result was that it's very likely (95% probability) that sea levels were at least 6.6 metres higher than today. It's likely (67% probability) that sea levels exceeded 8 metres (Kopp 2009).

Figure 1: Probability density plot of global sea level during the last interglacial. Heavy lines mark median projections, dashed lines the 16th and 84th percentiles, and dotted lines the 2.5th and 97.5th percentiles (Kopp 2009). Global sea level of 0 represents current sea level.

Independent analyses of the last interglacial paint a similar picture. A number of studies have found sea levels during the last interglacial much higher than modern levels, all concluding that ice sheets are very sensitive to temperature change (Blanchon 2009,Overpeck 2006, Rohling 2007). It's important to note that this doesn't mean sea levels will rise 6.6 metres by 2100. It takes time for the ice sheets to respond to warming and there is still much uncertainty over exactly how quickly sea levels will reach such levels.

Nevertheless, the bottom line is the global warming expected over the next century will take us to temperatures that in the past raised sea levels over 6 metres higher than current levels. This is a sobering fact for the millions of people concentrated on coastlines.

Link:  http://www.skepticalscience.com/Working-out-future-sea-level-rise-from-the-past.html

Skeptical Science: Could climate shifts be causing global warming?

Could climate shifts be causing global warming?

by John Cook, Skeptical Science, February 7, 2010

The work of Tsonis and Swanson are often cited as evidence against man-made global warming. Their research suggests our climate is subject to dramatic regime shifts. At key moments, the climate shifts from a warm regime to a cool regime, or vica versa. They claim climate shifts occured around 1910, 1940, 1976 and 2001. Some have interpreted this work to say climate shifts can explain the last few decades of global warming. Richard Lindzen's take is that 'this variability is enough to account for all climate change since the 19th Century'. Is this what Tsonis and Swanson's research shows? The best people to answer this question are the authors themselves as they address this very question in their peer-reviewed work.

The initial paper by Tsonis, Swanson and Kravtsov proposed that climate is subject to a phenomenon called synchronised chaos (Tsonis et al 2007). When examining a number of ocean cycles such as the El Nino Southern Oscillation and North Atlantic Oscillation, it was observed that the various ocean cycles synchronised at certain moments after which climate seemed to shift to a new regime. In 1910, the synchronisation was followed by a warmer regime and several decades of warming. Another synchronisation occured in 1940, switching to a cooler regime. This coincided with mid-century cooling from 1940 to 1970. In the 1970s, the planet began warming again.

Figure 1: HadCRUT3 global mean temperature over the 20th century, with approximate breaks in temperature indicated. The cross-hatched areas indicated time periods when synchronization is accompanied by increasing coupling (Swanson & Tsonis 2009).

Conventional understanding for the switch to warming in the 1970s is that warming from CO2 overcame cooling from forcings such as sulfate aerosols. Tsonis and Swanson suggest an 'alternative hypothesis, namely that the climate shifted after the 1970s event to a different state of a warmer climate, which may be superimposed on an anthropogenic warming trend'. It's this final phrase, 'superimposed on an anthropogenic warming trend', that Swanson and Tsonis explore further in a subsequent research.

In 2009, they continue to examine the coupling of ocean cycles, stressing 'caution that the shifts described here are presumably superimposed upon a long term warming trend due to anthropogenic forcing' (Swanson & Tsonis 2009). They extend their analysis further in a paper that uses climate modelling to separate man-made and natural variability (Swanson et al 2009). When internal variability is filtered from the smoothed observed temperature (solid black line), the cleaned signal (dashed line) shows nearly monotonic warming throughout the 20th Century. In fact, the cleaned signal fits a quadratic shape which indicates the warming is accelerating.

Figure 2: Observed GISS 21-year running mean global mean surface temperature (heavy solid) along with that temperature cleaned of the internal signal (dashed). The cleaned global mean temperature warms monotonically, and closely resembles a quadratic fit to the observed 20th century global mean temperature (thin solid) (Swanson 2009).

If climate shifts do actually occur, Tsonis and Swanson's research finds they are not responsible for the warming found over the 20th Century. Instead, they superimpose variability over the long-term trend which is that of steadily accelerating warming. This is consistent with observations which find the planet has been accumulating heat since 1950(Murphy 2009). Climate shifts do not stop the planet's energy imbalance. They merely cause temporary slow downs or speeding up of surface temperature warming.

Nevertheless, the theory of climate shifts has some unresolved issues. A key result of Tsonis and Swanson's work is that a shift to a cooler regime occured around 2001/2002. This shift is more marked in the HadCRUT record which is not a global temperature record. When Arctic regions are included, the global warming trend is greater in recent years and hence the 2001/2002 shift is not so pronounced. Hence the theory is dependent somewhat on an incomplete global record.

Another issue discussed in Swanson 2009 is that if climate is more sensitive to internal variability than currently thought, this would also mean climate is more sensitive to imposed forcings. This includes radiative forcings such as a warming sun, cooling from sulfate aerosols or warming from CO2. This leads to a crucial question that the authors themselves raise but don't answer. Conventional thought is that the warming sun and reduced volcanic activity caused much of the early 20th Century warming. Similarly, cooling from increased sulfate aerosols was a major contributor to mid-century cooling. In suggesting climate shifts as the cause, the authors offer no physical explanation as to why the warming sun and cooling aerosols didn't have their expected effect?

Nevertheless, if these issues are resolved and Tsonis and Swanson's theory is found to be valid, it's clear that climate shifts do not invalidate the human influence on climate. On the contrary, they show that underneath internal variability is a long-term trend. Tsonis and Swanson's analysis finds that imposed forcings have exerted a monotonic and accelerating warming trend throughout the 20th Century.

Link:  http://www.skepticalscience.com/Could-climate-shifts-be-causing-global-warming.html

Arctic ice melt alarms scientists: Local professor, Dr. David Barber, relates first-hand view of faster-than-expected change

Arctic ice melt alarms scientists

Local professor, Dr. David Barber, relates first-hand view of faster-than-expected change

Hat tip to reader FredT

by Bruce Owen, Winnepeg Free Press, February 6, 2010 

Prof. David Barber relates his findings at a symposium in Winnipeg Friday. Enlarge Image

(RUTH.BONNEVILLE@FREEPRESS.MB.CA)

A Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker makes its way through the ice in Baffin Bay. A local researcher says the melt of sea ice surpasses even pessimistic forecasts. (JONATHAN HAYWARD / THE CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVES) Enlarge Image

Sea ice in Canada's fragile Arctic is melting more quickly than anyone expected, the lead investigator in the largest climate change study done in Canada said Friday.

University of Manitoba Prof. David Barber, the lead investigator of the Circumpolar Flaw Lead System study, said the rapid decay of thick Arctic Sea ice highlights the rapid pace of climate change in the North and forecasts what will come in the south.

"We're seeing it happen more quickly than what our models thought would happen," Barber said at a student symposium on climate change at FortWhyte Alive. "It's happening much faster than our most pessimistic models suggested."

Barber and more than 300 scientists from around the globe spent last winter on the Canadian Coast Guard research ship Amundsen in the Arctic studying the impact of climate change. It was the first time a research vessel remained mobile in open water during the winter season. The Canadian government provided $156 million in funding for the study.

Barber said the melting sea ice can be compared to disappearing rainforests.

"If you go into the rainforest and you cut down all the trees, the ecosystem in that rainforest will collapse," he said. "If you go to the Arctic and you remove all the sea ice or if you remove the timing of the sea ice, the system will change."

That includes more invasive species moving up from the south and species that live in the Far North having to adapt to a different environment. Cyclones have also increased, which contribute to ice breakup.

Barber said before the expedition, scientists were working under the theory that climate change would happen much more slowly. It was assumed the Arctic would be ice-free in the winter by 2100.

"We expect it will happen much faster than that, much earlier than that, somewhere between 2013 and 2030 are our estimates right now. So it's much faster than what we would expect to happen. That can be said for southern climates as well."

The impact means more variability in the Earth's climate -- warm trends are warmer and cold trends are colder.

Dr. John Hanesiak, an associate professor at the U of M's Centre For Earth Observation Science, said those extremes, due to human actions and the release of greenhouse gases, might include more frequent summer droughts and more spring floods in southern climates.

"We know that we're part of the problem," he said. "There's no question about that. The models are telling us that now."

Scot Nickels, senior science adviser with Canada's national Inuit organization Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, said the impact of climate change has been significant on people who live in the North. It's changing their way of life as wildlife adapt and traditional hunting patterns change.

"There's also the need for economic development," Nickels said, adding mineral and oil exploration has also increased with changing weather. "It's a real balancing act that has to be done. As we know in the south that's not an easy thing. It's the same up north."

Dr. Steve Ferguson, a research scientist with the Fisheries and Oceans Canada, said the thinning ice and warming water bring species from the south and the potential for the spread of disease. "There's phocine distemper that in Europe has wiped out a huge number of harbour seals," he said. "There's now evidence some of that disease is in some of the Arctic seals, so there's concern that as things warm more further north, we can see some epidemics.

"Even killer whales, for example, we now know they move into the Arctic, but they come from quite far south, so again, they're in contact with other kinds of whale species in southern areas and they're bringing something potentially up north to the Arctic."

Link:  http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/arctic-ice-melt-alarms-scientists-83704042.html

Abandoning all journalistic standards, CBS libels Michael Mann based on a YouTube video — while reporting his exoneration!

Abandoning all journalistic standards, CBS libels Michael Mann based on a YouTube video — while reporting his exoneration!

Once-great network airs charges it knew to be false

by Joseph Romm, Climate Progress, February 7, 2010

“You know you’re in trouble when you’re being spoofed on YouTube.”

So begins one of the most shockingly unprofessional “news stories” you are ever likely to see from a major network that isn’t Fox.

The news organization that gave us Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite now bases its reporting on YouTube videos.  Thursday, CBS libeled climatologist Michael Mann on the basis of nothing more than a jingle someone uploaded to the Web:

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Memo to CBS:  Pretty much everybody is spoofed on a YouTube video — including the CBS evening news.  Does that mean that we are all in trouble?  I guess some questions answer themselves.


Yes, CBS actually shows Mann singing:

Makin’ up data the old hard way
Fudgin the numbers day by day

Truly unbelievable.

I generally do not use the word “libel” for media miscoverage of climate science.  But CBS reports in the same story, almost as a throwaway, that an academic panel had just cleared Mann of the exact same “charge” leveled at it by the fact-free video.  Thus, the false charge meets the tough legal standard for determining whether a major media outlet has defamed a public figure — that the publisher had “knowledge that the information was false” or that the information was published “with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”

As CBS knows, the Penn State inquiry found no evidence for allegations against Michael Mann.  He was cleared — once again — on any charges that he had directly or indirectly falsified data in his research.  And remember, unlike  the vast majority of published scientific analyses, which merely go through the scrutiny of peer review, the Hockey Stick graph was essentially vindicated in a thorough examination by a panel of the National Academy of Sciences (see NAS Report and here).

And while some published climate analyses which do not stand up under subsequent scrutiny in the scientific literature — mostly the stuff by the anti-science crowd that wasn’t reviewed by people who actually understood climate science — the Hockey Stick has not only withstood scrutiny but seen its conclusions expanded (see Sorry deniers, hockey stick gets longer, stronger: Earth hotter now than in past 2,000 years and Human-caused Arctic warming overtakes 2,000 years of natural cooling, ’seminal’ study finds [figure below]).


We have blown past the temperatures of the past two millenia.  That’s why climatologist and one-time darling of the contrarians Ken Caldeira said last year, “To talk about global cooling at the end of the hottest decade the planet has experienced in many thousands of years is ridiculous.”

Bottom line, CBS’s broadcast charges against Mann it knew to be false.  It is recklessly bad and defamatory reporting.

I guess the major media outlets feel they have no choice to hold on to their dwindling audience by going tabloid like the Washington Post has.   Eli Rabett is hopping mad over this, too, and has translated a post from the German that ends:

Meanwhile, something is happening, which is typical for the media: the law of the series. If a bug in the IPCC reports shows up, then the reader will be fascinated by a series of mistakes. Therefore, bad journalists (the rule) are always happy to report the Himalayan glaciers error as the second breakdown in climate science, (IPCC is just too boring to write, better throw it all in one bag) after covering the stolen emails from the Climate Research Unit, although the two events have nothing to do with each other. Strange when stealing from someone is described as a scandal of those stolen from and curiously, journalists cannot distinguish CRU, IPCC and climate research from each other -- such a lack of selectivity might be forgiven for Betty Blueyes and Johann Six-Pack, but not in the media. And so, after Emailgate and Himalayagate (in the sense of Watergate, that is somewhat like comparing a tax increase to the 3rd Reich), now we have Hurricangate and Amazonasgate.

One simply can’t keep up with all of the trash allegations being thrown at climate scientists these days in the hope that someone in the traditional media will be suckered into rerunning them.  But I’ll deal with the debunking of Amazongate this week.

Related post:

• Michael Mann updates the world on the latest climate science and responds to the illegally hacked emails

Link:  http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/07/abandoning-all-journalistic-standards-cbs-libels-michael-mann-based-on-a-youtube-video-while-reporting-his-exoneration/

Arctic Degrading Faster than First Thought: New climate change study finds rapid sea ice melt affecting everything from polar bears to microorganisms

Arctic Degrading Faster than First Thought

New climate change study finds rapid sea ice melt affecting everything from polar bears to microorganisms

• Melting ice, Svalbard, Arctic Circle  (AP)

(AP)  A massive international study on climate change has found global warming is degrading the Arctic more than previously thought.

David Barber, who helped lead a international expedition in the arctic, says rapid sea ice melt is affecting everything from polar bears to microorganisms.

He says there is more open ice now in the Arctic. That creates more cyclones, which in turn further erodes the sea ice crucial to the region's ecosystem. Scientists on the mission say what is happening in the Arctic is a bellwether of what will eventually happen further south.

Some 300 scientists from 27 countries spent months on an icebreaker studying climate change in the Arctic.

Meanwhile, U.S.-based Pew Environmental Group said it has quantified for the first time the economic costs of the Arctic's warming and it adds up to at least $2.4 trillion over the next 40 years.

Economist Eban Goldstein of Bard College in New York says the Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world.

And he says the combination of melting ice, increased sunlight absorption by darker barren ground and the release of methane as the permafrost thaws will this year warm the earth the equivalent of 40% of total U.S. industrial emissions.

Link:  http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/05/tech/main6178000.shtml