text:
## Suggestions-3

Please post ideas for new threads, tips on relevant and interesting threads elsewhere, and notes about pretty much anything you like here.

The scissors will be wielded to commercial spam, lewd suggestions, and anything else I don’t like. 8)

Comments
1. oldbrew says:

EPA tried to classify water as a pollutant in the State of Virginia.

http://sppiblog.org/news/cuccinelli-defeats-epas-attempt-to-classify-water-as-pollutant

2. oldbrew says:

Jan. 9, 2013 — ‘Starting this month, NASA will send a remotely piloted research aircraft as high as 65,000 feet over the tropical Pacific Ocean to probe unexplored regions of the upper atmosphere for answers to how a warming climate is changing Earth.’

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130109175412.htm

3. flare shot down …

good link monitoring solar cycle : http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/SC24web/SC24.html

4. wayne says:

MODS:
@tchannon says:
January 12, 2013 at 12:38 pm
Max � � � � � � � � �#

The characters in this comment seem to have broken the RSS feed, well, it’s a prime candidate anyway. 🙂

[Reply] Yeah, I think Max is going to have to change his handle. Too much weird stuff going on with wordpress at the moment.

5. Joe's World {Progressive Evolution} says:

TB,

Can I show you a FAR lower temperature rise?
Current anomaly study STEALS many hours that their has not been an anomaly.
It does not mater if an anomaly is for 10 minutes or 10 hours, the full 24 hours is taken for these pretty graphs.
So what about ALL those temperature hours that are not abnormal?

6. J Martin says:

From the Extremist Religious Rag that is the UK New Scientist publication;

Are we the altruistic generation? Do we care what happens to our grandchildren, and to their children?

The big dividend – cooler temperatures, fewer floods and droughts and better crop yields, compared to carrying on as we are – would only become clear by about 2100.

This, says Arnell, underlines that there is a lot of global warming “in the pipeline” that cannot now be prevented.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23070-benefits-of-emissions-cuts-kick-in-only-next-century.html?cmpid=RSS|NSNS|2012-GLOBAL|online-news

7. oldbrew says:

ScienceDaily reports: Gas That Triggers Ozone Destruction Revealed

Jan. 13, 2013 — Scientists at the Universities of York and Leeds have made a significant discovery about the cause of the destruction of ozone over oceans.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130113144812.htm

8. oldbrew says:

Doug Hoffmann reports on a discrepancy between NOAA and Met Office data for the stratosphere, which he says means climate models could all be wrong.

http://www.theresilientearth.com/?q=content/science-gets-stratosphere-wrong

9. oldbrew says:

…and climate models are wrong again, according to a new paper, because they have underestimated the effect of soot.

‘The new study concludes that black carbon, the soot particles in smoke and smog, contributes about twice as much to global warming as previously estimated, even by the 2007
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.’

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130115153517.htm

The paper is available online (see link).

10. Scute says:

Here’s one for Tim. Could this be the Australian Gravesend? From a BBC article on the record-breaking temperature recorded in Sydney:

“The highest temperature recorded in the Greater Sydney Area was 46.5 °C at Penrith, where observations started in 1995.”

From the BBC website article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21072347

HOWEVER it should be noted that for once the BBC isn’t spinning as far as it could. It starts the article by referring to the temperature of 45.8C recorded at Observatory Hill which does apparently have a long-established record because they cite the previous record there as 45.3C in 1939. So the official record has been broken by 0.5C (notwithstanding other manipulations).

The reason I’m giving you the heads up on this is that firstly, other media outlets could be citing the Penrith temperature and comparing it to the 1939 record ie smashing it by 1.2C or, secondly, the BBC or others could still commit such a transgression in the near future.

I wonder if the Penrith, Sydney station is sitting in a chalk quarry or somewhere similarly ridiculous. It’s happened at Gravesend, established late 90’s as we know and there’s also a new one basking in a heat trap below a cliff at one end of Death Valley put there recently too. WUWT did a post on that one and are poised to pounce when it is finally trumpeted across the MSM as the ‘highest global temperature ever’.

Scute

11. Joe's World {Progressive Evolution} says:

TB,

Shape plays a huge role in weight distribution,
Our scientists, through “observation” see a box on our planet with square side and the same volume an weight in it.
Our planet being an orb see’s a box as slightly angled out. This then effects weight distribution. Especially when you have many factors shaking that box.
It can easily be measured by measuring the circumference of our planet surface, Every mm of height has a different measurement due to our planet shape as an orb. This can apply to water depths as well.
Changing the shape of a glass can change the distribution of weight from being tipsy to being totally stable. This is then where the shape of hurricanes and tornadoes are shaped.

Water does NOT give hurricane energy! Water gives the hurricane more evaporation density, but it is the height of the atmospheric winds that add to the speed of rotation.

12. Further to Scute, when I read that story I checked out Observatory Hill on googlemaps and although I cannot class it (estimate 4?), the surrounds are shocking. Then I saw this from 2011 with some nice aerial shots:

http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/development/documents/CityImprovements/HarbourVillageNthPublicDomainStudy/AppendixB_ObservatoryHillMasterplanReview_Part1.pdf

Check pages 6-7 (lovely one also on pg 12) which shows building changes inc. Cahill expressway added (1958) a widening of the Bradfield highway (1974)

““Observatory Hill is one of the most important historic sites in Sydney……While the Hill has
been built upon, traversed by roads and pathways, cut into, enclosed and transformed
into a public park, its identity as an urban space has remained intact.”
Observing Sydney, S.H.Ervin Gallery, 1993

Sydney Observatory image 1941

http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/aboutsydney/historyandarchives/SydneyHistory/ParksHistory/ObservatoryPark.asp

Some other images:

http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Search/Home?filter%5B%5D=pi%3Anla.pic*&type=all&lookfor=observatory+hill&x=0&y=0

No ideas if the weather station has been moved.

An article on the 1939 record (followed by record temp drop) when N Sth Wales experienced similar temps.

13. Scute says:

Following from Craig M:

Thanks. It’s nice when people follow up. That’s a lot of research. I looked at the links (except the first one was really slow so I’ll have to click on it later and go and make a cup of tea).

Photos were interesting and the most interesting thing about the article was that the temp that day didn’t drop below 109F for 6 hours. That seems highly unusual and worthy of note in that, I feel intuitively that 6 hours sustained at 109F is somehow a greater record than say, 110F achieved for an hour. It’s also interesting that there was such a great drop afterwards as if it was inevitable after such a sustained high point. A very strange day, that was.

Now, in the meantime since my comment, I’ve been skulking around on two very interesting and totally related threads at WUWT (am I allowed to say that?) here:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/14/global-warming-it-was-warmer-in-sydney-in-1790/

This will definitely interest you Craig because in this post Anthony Watts shows some perfect pictures of the Obsevatory Hill site and it turns out it was moved. It shows the old siting and the new one with all the heat sinks you describe. These pics etc are incidental to the main topic which is about the fact that 1790 saw higher temps.

There is a follow up post that addresses concerns about the accuracy of early settlers’ temp measurements which is very interesting. I made a comment in that thread following up on other detailed research about the exact instruments used, and how and where they were sited:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/18/a-follow-up-on-the-it-was-warmer-in-1790-in-sydney-story/

These two WUWT posts were done before today’s report of 45.8 so they don’t have quite the same impact but the UHI debate then comes into play in the debate.

14. tchannon says:

Yep, known wombat poo and ain’t Hovis

— wikipedia

15. Scute says:

Craig M,

Your link finally loaded and I’ve worked out from the aerial picture on p12 and from Anthony’s pictures that the temp station was moved from just below the bottom green dome of the obsevatory to the big circular structure- specifically, it is the small white dot to the right of the middle block of buildings in the circular structure. There’s a reference in Anthony’s post implying that it was moved in or around 1918. I don’t know if that nice radiant brick wall 10 feet away was there when the 1939 record was achieved.

16. oldbrew says:

Gamma-ray burst ‘hit Earth in 8th Century’

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21082617

[Reply] Hmmm, not seeing any big spike around 774 on this plot.

17. Scute says:

Roger Harrabin, still addicted to spin after all that has gone on with the Met decadal forecasts:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21066534

I’m particularly perplexed by the supposed bad wording of the caption below the two different forecast graphs. Harrabin says:

“The second error was in the caption to a graph comparing the new temperature forecast with one from the past. It was badly-worded and led bloggers to conclude that the Met Office were trying to cover up the disparity between forecasts. (They seem to have accepted later that this is not the case).”

Harrabin implies that it was ‘bloggers’ that were confused and now agree that it wasn’t saying what they thought it said. Wasn’t it just Shukman who ‘misread’ it, ‘bloggers’ pointed out his mistake and are now happy that his article has been corrected?

When I first read through this article I could see at least a dozen mealy-mouthed phrases. On returning to copy and paste I’ve seen another half dozen. It is riddled with spin. If I had time I would comb through it and add my annotations to each little lie, inserted and smoothed down into place so it hardly gets noticed as a lie. The BBC are consummate performers in this skill.

18. oldbrew says:

TB says (Jan.21]: ‘not seeing any big spike around 774’

The spike is visible on these readings from Antarctica.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187110140800006X

19. JabbaTheCat says:

I’m assuming that the person posting as Tallbloke on the Daily Telegraph blog comments is nothing to do with you?

http://disqus.com/Tallbloke/

[Reply] Correct. I use ‘Rog Tallbloke’ since the imposter appropriated my handle. Call him out when you see him there please.

20. J Martin says:

James Lovelock.

We need take care that the spinning windmills do not become like the statues on Easter Island, monuments of a failed civilisation.

This could be quote of the year.

http://joannenova.com.au/2013/01/james-lovelock-partly-recants/#comment-1230514

21. Rossa says:

Hello Roger
Not sure whether this would be of interest to you:
http://www.starscientific.com.au/#

[Reply] I might wait until I see an article on the site titled something like “independently verified experimental results”. 😉

22. oldbrew says:

Not the urban heat island effect…

‘In a new study that shows the extent to which human activities are influencing the atmosphere, scientists have concluded that the heat generated by everyday activities in metropolitan areas alters the character of the jet stream and other major atmospheric systems. This affects temperatures across thousands of miles, significantly warming some areas and cooling others, according to the study this week in Nature Climate Change.’

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130127134210.htm

[Reply] Discussion at WUWT: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/27/waste-heat-a-bigger-climate-effect-than-once-thought/

23. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/28/coralline-algae-and-the-case-for-natural-climate-change/
Seems that Leif has taken a negative stance to the conclusion of this study in comments,

24. Sparks says:

Roger, you might be interested in this article from1929 on a very cold European winter that was forecast a year in advance by Abbe Moreux director of Bourges Observatory, “the extreme cold is due to the diminution of solar activity” he also predicted a renewal of earth quakes in 1929-30 with much volcanic activity in 1930-31. It’s a very interesting page which reports on the themes freezing over and death-roll from influenza that year due to the freezing conditions in Britain which contradicts the nonsense that seasonal flu is linked to warmer winters being laughed at over at WUWT http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/28/flu-and-warmer-winters/

REDUCED SOLAR ACTIVITY. (1929, February 23). Chronicle

(Adelaide, SA : 1895 – 1954)

REDUCED SOLAR ACTIVITY.

PARIS, February 15.

The director of Bourges Observatory (Abbe Moreux), whose forecast of a year ago has been fulfilled in the severity of the winter being experienced now. predicts that the icy spell will continue till the end of February. He expects conditions to be less severe in Great Britain. He explains that the extreme cold is due to the diminution of solar activity, which began several months ago. He prophesies a renewal of earth quakes in 1929-30 with much volcanic activity in 1930-31.

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page8638881

25. Sparks says:

What do you think of this, Ive been exploring planetary precession in orbits and crunching some values, I noticed that they match the precession in the timing of solar cycles. This is that timing plotted to monthly sunspot area 1875-2040, it’s has values from the orbits of only three planets and the values could be refined a whole lot more for accuracy, The interesting thing is these orbital planetary values have to be used together as they go out of sync with the solar cycles in the plot when used individually. I matched it going back to around the1600s in another SSN chart and the precession values hold very well. this chart is very straight forward to read and I’ve added the values up to 2035 for interest. Even if the timing at this stage appears to be a few months out, it seems to be useful in estimating where maximum and minimum are or possibly where they will be.

26. Piers thinking something is changing solar wise this week:

‘There IS something very special going on this week in the way the Sun will make changes to the Earth’s climate, so for the sake of argument, lets call it a “live experiment” between Astrophysics and Meteorology.

Please have an open mind for the outcome of this event during the next few days’
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=11041

27. Sparks says:

Okay.. I think I’ve worked out this morning how to explain the results I plotted. http://thetempestspark.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/sunspot_area-1875-2040-4.jpg

It’s called a Secular resonance of the precession in planetary orbits and it matches the timing of the solar cycle, Ive used three Jovian planets to work out the precession value and used this value to work out the secular resonance pattern which matches the timing of every solar maximum and solar minimum over hundreds of years.

i) When the value of 23.74 years is plotted by date to the ssn record and we plot a step back every 23.74 years starting from 2008 solar minimum the timing quickly becomes out of sync with every second solar minimum. EXAMPLE: http://thetempestspark.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/out-of-sync.jpg

When the value of 23.74 years is plotted by date to the ssn record and we plot a step back every 23.74 years starting from 2008 solar minimum and add the precession value to 23.74 years the timing becomes synchronized with every second solar minimum.
EXAMPLE: http://thetempestspark.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/synchronized.jpg

ii) This works for any starting date. If we start from the solar minimum of 1913 and we plot a step forward every 23.74 years the timing will again be out of sync with the SSN record.

Once we add the precession value and we plot a step forward every 23.74 years the timing will again become synchronized with every second solar minimum.

iii) To work out the timing of the remaining solar minimums we divide 23.74 by 2 which gives the value of 11.87 years, when we add the precession value this will again synchronize the 11.87 year value with every second solar minimum.

Dividing 23.74 by 2 and adding the precession value will give the date of the solar minimum between the dates of the first two solar minimums of 23.74 years we plotted.

iv) To work out the timing of the solar maximums we divide 11.87 by 2 which gives the value of 5.93 years, when we add the precession value this will synchronize the 5.93 year value with every solar maximum.

v)The whole process can be automated, so far the precision of this timing is on a monthly scale, and restricted to only three planets, using higher quality observations of orbital values will give better resolution in the timing of the Suns magnetic activity.

There also seems to be a relationship between this timing and the amplitude and intensity of solar activity, magnetic cycles, Sun spot numbers etc… I have only touched on the patterns emerging in favor of working on the timing. Also It maybe too early to say for certain, but, I think the Planets dampen solar activity. If we took the planets away the sun would be more active. Which means if the planets didn’t develop around the sun, it would be a lot dimmer as it would had used up more fuel quicker reducing it’s lifespan. This may explain why most stars are dimmer than our sun, they may not have a sufficient planetary system.

[Reply] Sparks: If you want to generate interest and discussion about this you’ll need to explain what the ‘precession’ value is, and how you’ve derived it. Write it up as a post and put it in suggestions and I’ll repost it as an article if it makes sense to me. Cheers – TB

28. Sparks says:

Thanks, Do you think it would it be better if I break it down into the basic idea so it can be picked apart and reconstructed because it will get very complex fast if I begin writing about Secular Resonance and what I mean by the ‘precession’ value, then we can discuss the complexities once it’s under stood. It took months to work out, it can be little difficult understand at first. Okay, I’ll get back to you soon.

[Reply] Yes, start with the first principles. Stop after 1000 words or so and post that. We’ll take it from there.

29. oldbrew says:

The USGS discusses ‘the sun and climate’ in a Fact Sheet [sic] last modified 9/1/13.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-0095-00/

Closing statement in the paper:

‘ It might be argued that if you look hard enough, you can find a correlation
between solar cycles and anything, such as cycles in the stockmarket. Never-
theless, enough evidence exists to support the hypothesis of Denton and
Karlén (1973) that solar cycles, as recorded in the 14C variations, may be em-
pirical indicators of paleoclimates. Cycles in sedimentary records with
periodicities similar to those of solar cycles do not mean causation. The
challenge to geologists and atmospheric scientists is to test these correlations
with reasonable models of how solar cycles could affect the atmosphere and
geologic processes at the surface of the Earth.’

30. Ian W says:

A simple thought experiment suggestion.

Take a gas tight container largely made of an IR transparent material with a metal base heat insulated from the IR transparent material. Fill that container with Nitrogen 76% and Oxygen 24% and raise the temperature of the metal base to say 50C. Leave the entire apparatus for a few hours for the gases inside the container to heat by conduction/collision. Using sensors confirm that as expected the gas itself is not radiating IR. Now if CO2 is injected to raise its concentration in the gases to 400ppm the gas mixture will start radiating IR due to the properties of the CO2.

Is this true?

If so as people may have been pointing out CO2 assists in the radiative cooling of the atmosphere as the chances of a molecule being hit by a photon of OLR is less than the chances of that molecule being energized by molecular collisions. I have not seen any mention of a radiative cooling effect of CO2 or heard of it being added to models.

31. I notice here:

https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/10/23/the-carbon-flame-war-final-comment/

that you’ve put together a model which uses sunspot numbers and correlates with sea surface temperatures with a 0.874 correlation.

Can I have instructions on how to reproduce that result?

Thank you,

Craig
Manchester, NH

[Reply] Emailed you the .xls

32. Scute says:

Just in:

NASA can’t get enough cosmic rays. (Copied RSS feed below). First it was ATTREX kicking off last month. And now the preliminary verdict is in from ballooning across Antarctica where they found “large numbers of cosmic rays”. All very welcome but why play it all down in AR5 chapter 7 while all this was going on behind the scenes?

Feb. 4, 2013

J.D. Harrington
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-5241
j.d.harrington@nasa.gov

Rebecca Powell
Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Va.
757-824-1139
rebecca.h.powell@nasa.gov

RELEASE: 13-037

NASA’S SUPER-TIGER BALLOON BREAKS RECORDS WHILE COLLECTING DATA

WASHINGTON — A large NASA science balloon has broken two flight
duration records while flying over Antarctica carrying an instrument
that detected 50 million cosmic rays.

The Super Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder (Super-TIGER) balloon
launched at 3:45 p.m. EST, Dec. 8 from the Long Duration Balloon site
near McMurdo Station. It spent 55 days, 1 hour, and 34 minutes aloft
at 127,000 feet, more than four times the altitude of most commercial
airliners, and was brought down to end the mission on Friday.
Washington University of St. Louis managed the mission.

On Jan. 24, the Super-TIGER team broke the record for longest flight
by a balloon of its size, flying for 46 days. The team broke another
record Friday after landing by becoming the longest flight of any
heavy-lift scientific balloon, including NASA’s Long Duration
Balloons. The previous record was set in 2009 by NASA’s Super
Pressure Balloon test flight at 54 days, 1 hour, and 29 minutes.

“Scientific balloons give scientists the ability to gather critical
science data for a long duration at a very low relative cost,” said
Vernon Jones, NASA’s Balloon Program Scientist.

Super-TIGER flew a new instrument for measuring rare elements heavier
than iron among the flux of high-energy cosmic rays bombarding Earth
from elsewhere in our Milky Way galaxy. The information retrieved
from this mission will be used to understand where these energetic
atomic nuclei are produced and how they achieve their very high
energies.

The balloon gathered so much data it will take scientists about two
years to analyze it fully.

“This has been a very successful flight because of the long duration,
which allowed us to detect large numbers of cosmic rays,” said Dr.
Bob Binns, principal investigator of the Super-TIGER mission. “The
instrument functioned very well.”

The balloon was able to stay aloft as long as it did because of
prevailing wind patterns at the South Pole. The launch site takes
advantage of anticyclonic, or counter-clockwise, winds circulating
from east to west in the stratosphere there. This circulation and the
sparse population work together to enable long-duration balloon
flights at altitudes above 100,000 feet.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Office of Polar Programs manages
the U.S. Antarctic Program and provides logistic support for all U.S.
scientific operations in Antarctica. NSF’s Antarctic support
contractor supports the launch and recovery operations for NASA’s
Balloon Program in Antarctica. Mission data were downloaded using
NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System.

For more information about NASA’s Balloon Program, visit:

http://www.wff.nasa.gov/balloons

-end-

To subscribe to the list, send a message to:
hqnews-subscribe@mediaservices.nasa.gov
To remove your address from the list, send a message to:
hqnews-unsubscribe@mediaservices.nasa.gov

[Reply] Check your inbox – Rog

33. J Martin says:

TSI steadily declining at a rate of nearly 1w per annum.

Found via WUWT.

Does that rate of reduction tie up with Rog & Tim’s models ?

How many watts do we need to lose before we get to glaciation kick off point ?

34. tchannon says:

Quick look at existing stuff here, 1361.39 might be a mean for SORCE. Assuming the satellite which is in death throws is right and given solar magnetic poles are changing, it might mean past sunspot maximum, yet large later peaks are known in history. SORCE is a very short record.
I’ll yank some new data.

35. […] Martin asked about this dataset in the Comments thread here so I did an […]

36. richardcfromnz says:

Roger, Tim, you may be interested in this thread at Skeptical Science:-

http://www.skepticalscience.com/dueling-scientists-oregonian.html#90341

You may be aware of the storm Gordon Fulks kicked up with an article at The Oregonian, this thread picks up from the responses to it by the SkS guys e.g. here (see the Nuccitelli letter):-

http://blog.oregonlive.com/myoregon/2013/02/letters_political_parties_clim.html/post/2013-02-05/1360056699-874-791.html

I’ve contacted Gordon, Robert Knox and David Douglass letting them know of the SKS and Oregonian live threads.

You will have to read the SkS article and scan down the comments at SkS following mine at #9 to get the gist of the difficulty I’m encountering. Basically I’m trying to tie down Nuccitelli et al, Schmittner and Rahmstorf (the latter 2 not present) as to the process they subscribe to that explains the notion of aGHGs causing the approx 18×10^22 J OHC accumulation over the last 40 yrs or so and why details of such a process are not mentioned at all in IPCC AR4.

Cheers

Richard Cumming (New Zealand) aka “Richard C (NZ)”, “Nonentity NZ” and “richardcfromnz”

37. Scute says:

Matt McGrath, BBC environment correspondent reports today on changes in public attitudes towards global warming, citing survey data that shows a 10% drop in the number of people who have a “belief that the Earth’s temperature is rising”. You might think that would be a good point at which to mention that a “belief” in rising temperatures would be plain wrong based on the last 16 years of data- but this is McGrath and this is the BBC.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21345116

McGrath rounds the article off with a flourish of unashamed irony from Dr Adam Corner of Cardiff University:

‘While it might appear on some level a little odd to have your views on climate change shaped by [colder] weather patterns, Dr Corner says that there is some reason in this view.

“In some senses, it is exactly what you should be basing it on over time, because we’re not meteorologists and apart from the things we get told, the things going on around us are going to provide more of a steer,” he added.’

38. J Martin says:

Though fines for not using a non-existent fuel were quashed, EPA doubled the 2013 mandate for using the still non-existent fuel!

http://www.cfact.org/2013/02/04/court-of-appeals-punctures-a-hole-in-epas-cellulosic-ethanol-balloon/

39. Scute says:

This was just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Scientists:

Surfactants from the Gas Phase May Promote Cloud Droplet Formation (Neha Sareen et al).

The first link below is the PNAS page for this paper. It has an informative abstract then the usual paywall when you click through. However, I got through the back door and got an 8-page PDF which appears to show most or all of the paper with graphs etc. but without abstract (I haven’t read it yet- thought I’d get this into Suggestions first). The PDF link is the second one.

http://m.pnas.org/content/early/2013/01/29/1204838110.abstract?sid=072a2bff-aad0-47aa-aa47-c97a09a3584d

http://m.pnas.org/content/suppl/2013/01/29/1204838110.DCSupplemental/pnas.201204838SI.pdf

NAS is a respected, non-profit organisation…at least, for the most part. They are avowedly Warmist and backed Michael Mann to the hilt over the University of Virginia fracas involving the Virginia Attorney General.

The innocuous-looking findings in this paper could be an inconvenient truth for them: it was the lack of a known mechanism to enhance the hygroscopicity of GCR cascade particles that was cited as a reason to shelve the neat GCR correlations alluded to so briefly in AR5 chapter 7. This paper by Sareen et al is all about enhancement, a hitherto unknown mechanism, tested in an aerosol reaction chamber. The MSM circus over the AR5 leak by Alec Rawls can be traced to this single issue, cited specifically by Rawls, but spun into oblivion by the MSM. I should think Alec will be quite pleased by this.

Interestingly, NAS are quite close to US government circles. The government often asks them to investigate aspects of national interest and Global Warming certainly got a lot of attention from them. So which department decided to ask for this research? Or publish it at least (it does say “PNAS direct submission” at the bottom). Either way, it won’t be helping their case. To their credit, NAS do come up with unpalatable results from time to time and don’t shirk in serving it cold. Perhaps this is a case in point.

Scute

40. tchannon says:

Technically this is beyond me and probably not suitable for a bald article, it needs a knowledgeable commentary. What you have written might be usable with edits.

41. Scute says:

Tim,

I see you got the longer version. That’s good.

I think it’s beyond me too (but I’m going to read it anyway). Maybe someone with the specific know-how will see it in suggestions and give their thoughts on it. I think the fact that they’ve found at least one mechanism for smaller aerosols- that’s been happening all along under our noses- means we can’t rule out others.

42. Ray c says:

Scute, I find stuff related to aerosol formation fascinating, although I am by no means an expert, this does seem to be confirmation that the Biotic regulation theory where trees create wind has more going for it. Volatile organic compounds are produced by plants, these compounds seem to have the ability to convert from gas to aerosol, or ” combine” with existing acid droplets to make aerosols big enough to form cloud condensation nuclei. In other words there is now an experimentaliy identified route to the creation of additional mass in the atmosphere from gasses produced by surface living plants. The result being that water vapour has an easier route for condensation and so, raindrop formation. Plus the fact that VOC’s will be formed at higher daytime temperatures in the leaves, they will convect rapidly, be very reactive and assist in the rapid formation of cumulus cloud formations. That’s my take on this interesting paper but like I say I’m no expert. Help anyone?

43. wayne says:

Darn… how about at least this:
$\Phi _{T_s}=\left [\frac{\mu-1}{(2^\mu+1)} \left(OLR+\frac{column\;mass}{2^\mu \sqrt{2}^\mu \right )} \right ]^\frac{1}{\mu}$
mu = spacetime dimensions

Sorry to use this as testbed for WordPress’s capabilities.

[ Play as much as you like on this link –Tim]

44. Scute says:

Ray c

Thanks for the input. I didn’t think of the Makarieva connection i.e. forests affecting weather/winds. After all, most VOCs are of biological origin. It’s a very interesting idea. What I don’t get though is the fact that there seems to be almost a reverse correlation on both of the modelled maps, with the continents bathed in purple (although that does mean some enhancement). The main thing is that it shows an overall enhancement albeit over the oceans- and they are only models- but there must have been an input in the model algorithm that produced that effect. Either that or it’s a pretty spectacular example of ’emergence’ from interplay between the inputs.

45. Doug Proctor says:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/08/study-plate-tectonics-modulates-volcanic-activity-which-in-turn-modulates-climate-forcings/#more-79135

Over on WUWT, referenced above, is a discussion of a study from Rice University that connects

1) major interglacials or ends to glacials with
2) volcanic breakdown of cratonic carbonates (producing CO2) consequent to
3) induced volcanism along continental margins at
4) times of renewed plate tectonic movements.

Counter-arguments immediately arise because glacial periods are clearly (!) time linked to Milankovich cycles (and sub-cycles).

In a world of either-or, the correlation of major climatic reversals to positions in the galactic orbit of the solar system would kill the tectonic theory. Of course, we don’t live in a world of either-or (except when wealth or poverty is considered in light of stock investments, that is). So, I wondered, how are the two either reconciled or connected?

Here’s the thought in which you astrophysicists would have expert opinion :

First:

If you consider tectonic movement on a larger scale, it is an episodic thing that takes the mantle from a state of stability into instability. (On a smaller scale, the plates are always moving, but it seems like at times there is fast, disruptive movement and others, not so much. Right now the Atlantic is opening, Iceland is spewing, and the Himalayas are rising, but in each case no planet-shattering activity is going on compared to prior times. So I suggest that we are in a time of stability, relative as that term may be. A digression of technical importance, but a digression. So to continue …)

Now there could be a cyclic threshold situation here, much like that of an operatingcoffee percolator: the percolator heats water up until a “blurch” of evaporated air fires a quantum of overlying, heated water up the tube, whereupon it hits the glass cap and sprays out over the perforated container of ground coffee. Producing the characteristic sound. What has happened is that an amount of water has heated to the boiling temperature and then absorbed the additional heat for the state change from liquid to vapour. The rest of the water in the container is still at boiling temperature, but lacks the heat of state change. An amount of quiet time now passes before the next blurch, the time required to build up state-change energy for the next water to be evaporated and push the overlying column of liquid water up the pipe to continue the process of making coffee. The reason the percolator works at all is that boiling water has this threshold function built into it: the state transition of liquid to vapour that happens suddenly and, by drawing down all the transition energy available, leaves the remaining water at the right temperature but without the additional energy left to generate a gas bubble. (A still works only because alcohol leaves an alcohol-water mixture in a linear, non-threshold fashion, without a requirement of state change or boiling of the mash, which would produce alcohol and water together. Digression number two …)

In the case of the planet, it could be that radioactive materials, combined with tidal forces, produce the energy that drives the magma cycles like that a stove top fora percolator. Again, the process could have a threshold problem or more simply, generates a cooling rate greater than the heating rate. Essentially, the planet’s mantle has one “blurch” in it. A burp, if you will, and then significant time is required to build up enough of a state-transition equivalent of energy before the next strong movement.

That being said, that we go from a position of stability into instability, what we need are forces, i.e. stressors, to do so. Something makes one thing into another. If we wish to link Milankovich cycles to tectonic cycles, we have to introduce a stressor from this galactic connection. In the old days the idea was that the stressor was dust between the galactic arms that reduced solar insolation, cooling the Earth. This would imply that warm is the normal, and cold is the exception: glacial periods were induced. The tectonic model suggests the other, that cold is normal, and warmth, the exception: we get interglacials when CO2 goes up (at least the major interglacials).

(Third digression: let us forget the indications that at recent glacial periods end before CO2 goes up, that warm periods produce more CO2 than the reverse. In terms of the Ordovician, Devonian, Mississippian etc., we are talking about major planetary warmth, large enough that dinosaurian lifeforms left the Arctic each fall because it got dark, not because it got ice-cap cold. Now, to re-continue… )

How about this for an induced stressor for tectonic activity on a Milankovich, galactic scale: very dense but small objects, like small, stable black holes, that lie close to the orbital plane.

The idea: during our galactic orbit, we periodically we pass near very large gravitational masses, large enough to pull the the entire solar system towards them, but volumetrically small enough that we are int their vicinity only briefly (on a galactic time-scale). What if we, at a solar system level, are like the passengers in a car cruising smoothly down the road that every so often hits a Canadian highway reality, a frost-heave and melt collapse of tarmac? Suddenly our car drops, and then, with a bump, comes up the other side. The bump wasn’t enough to change the course of our travels, but we seemed to rise (as the car dropped, due to inertia and a relative perception of motion) and hit our heads on the roof of the car. Brief but memorable.

In this analogy, the Earth, is the “head” that hits the roof is the mantle.

I’m imagining the solar system coming by a black hole that induces not a smooth movement but an ACCELERATION in movement. The acceleration of movement has the force element I’m considering.

I’ll try another analogy from some unfortunate personal experiences. I’m thinking of my head when I get a smack from a bully in the playground: as I jerk back from his fist, inside my skull my brain moves a little slower than the hard skull outside (hello Newton’s Law). And then when my skull stops, and moves back (the whiplash), my brain reacts once more more slowly than my skull. So first my frontal cortex is bruised, and and then my rear brain is bruised. For the Earth, the induced acceleration while on one side of the solar system causes the plastic or “liquid” mantle to push up against the crust on the side furthest from the black hole (gravitational point). Six months later, while orbiting away from the near side of the black hole, AND STILL ACCELERATING TOWARDS THE BLACK HOLE, the mantle pushes up. And with each orbital period, as long as the acceleration of the solar system lasts, it happens over again.

Until the black hole is behind us, like the divot in the highway. Though there are (like a car on good springs) residual sloshing as the planet settles down.

I don’t see the need of a lot of force needed. A a planet-changing tectonic event, as witnessed by a “small” hotspot that is creating the Hawaiian volcanic chain, doesn’t seem to require much. But what we have seen in the breakup of Pangaea, Gondwanaland etc. are sudden splits and serious movement within long periods of rest (punctuated equilibrium of the planet, as for evolution). Could a number of solar system size MASCONs be out there, sufficiently positioned and orbitally stable to do as I wonder?

Just a thought. Several, actually, but that is how we fit simple processes into a complex reality: reductionist in theory, collectivist in practice.

Over to you, Roger.

46. adolfogiurfa says:

Polarities dance the source of everything:

47. Scute says:

Here’s a new report from NASA on groundwater loss in the (not so) Fertile Crescent. It comes from data recorded by the two GRACE satellites, which can measure gravitational anomalies at or near the Earth’s surface including water loss. The report sheds light on why sea levels are rising (although NASA doesn’t care to mention the obvious link, preferring to focus on the freshwater resources issue):

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Grace/news/grace20130212.html

A few sime calcs throw this loss into perspective:

The earth’s oceans cover 335 million square km
The loss quantified in the report is 144 cubic km
This equates to a 0.43mm rise in sea level over 7 years.

That might not seem like much but it is a huge contribution to sea level rise considering 1) The measured rise is between 1.7mm/yr and 3.3mm/yr (the now-disputed satellite data)
2) This is a tiny portion of the worlds land surface and, according to the report, less than India’s loss.

That means that the Fertile Crescent plus India have contributed 1mm or between 1/12th or possibly 1/23rd of the sea level rise in 7 years. If you add in Bangladesh, SW United States (the GRACE satellites had already found California alone had lost 30 cubic km) and many other areas around the world, groundwater loss is a significant contributer to sea level rise. Yet, it is hardly ever mentioned as a major culprit.

Scute

48. Ian W says:

There are more direct measurements of use of deep aquifers or ‘fossil water’ as it seems to be called. Google: “fossil water” “cubic kilometers” – you will see far more than 14 cubic km. For example:

“Just as Libya mines the desert for crude; they are doing the same for ‘fossil water’ – ice age water preserved in the porous holes of the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer.

The massive aquifer stretches under Libya, Egypt, Chad, and Sudan. It includes four freshwater basins inside Libya that contain approximately 10,000 to 12,000 cubic kilometers (480 cubic miles) of ancient water buried as deep as 600 meters (2,000 feet) below the surface of the desert, reporters were told during the government presentation.

If you carry out a little exercise of adding all these various aquifer mining exercises you will easily reach 100 cubic km extracted.

49. Scute says:

I’m getting email notifications that richardcfromnz has left a comment in Suggestions. When I go to Suggestions his comment isn’t there even though one of mine and one other have gone in ok. I can read Richard’s comment in my email feed but others just copping a look at Suggestions won’t see it. It is an interesting point. I have wondered about asking for a post on the subject because there hasn’t been one (or at least not recently). I followed the links to the SKS thread and as usual it’s all whipped up Nuccitelli froth instead of Richard’s simple questions being answered.

50. tchannon says:

Moderation is empty apart from held for Rog. Spam has been checked.

I have a vague recollection of putting something like that on hold for Rog to handle. Not pending and I am pretty sure I didn’t zap it.

Could try new glasses or brower cache refresh, 6th Feb, if not that one, no idea.

I’m struggling trying to keep blog things going and take part.

51. oldbrew says:

Even NASA now hints at the importance of solar variability. After admitting the subject needs much more research, they conclude by saying:

‘A better long-term record of the sun’s irradiance might be encoded in the rocks and sediments of the Moon or Mars. Studying other worlds might hold the key to our own.’

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/08jan_sunclimate/

[ Send more money. Sediments on the Moon? How about showing the flowing liquid first. –Tim]

52. oldbrew says:

Maybe they took another look at Abdussamatov.

http://news.nationalgeographic.co.uk/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html

53. Scute says:

Oldbrew,
That’s an interesting paper from Abdussamatov. Notice how the National Geographic reporter uses a BBC trick on page 2 to smear him: under the heading halfway down there are two paragraphs of the reporter’s own thoughts followed by a quote from a scientist (Evan) saying the world would be a ball of ice without greenhouse gases. This quote is inserted as if in response to the two paragraphs above thus making Abdussamatov appear to be quite ignorant of ideal black body radiation. The reporter has deftly inserted CO2 as a straw man without mentioning the fact that Abdussamatov would almost certainly agree on elevated temps via other means (eg pressure gradient etc.).

This is happening all over the MSM. We read this stuff and even we don’t realise they are doing it until we blink and read it again! It’s so underhanded!

54. Roger Andrews says:

For those interested here’s what Obama had to say about climate change in yesterday’s State of the Union Address:

“But for the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change. Yes, it’s true that no single event makes a trend. But the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods – all are now more frequent and intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science – and act before it’s too late.

“The good news is, we can make meaningful progress on this issue while driving strong economic growth. I urge this Congress to pursue a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change, like the one John McCain and Joe Lieberman worked on together a few years ago. But if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will. I will direct my Cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.”

These comments made up about 3% of Obama’s speech, about the same amount of space as he devoted to the dangers of cyber-attack and about half as much as he devoted to immigration reform.

Full text at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/13/state-of-the-union-full-text

55. oldbrew says:

When Obama says ‘on record’ he refers to the satellite record i.e. about 34 years of data which is trivial, not even a single 60-year climate cycle.

@ Scute

Clearly political correctness exists in climate circles too. But Abdussamatov gets some support here.

http://notrickszone.com/2013/02/13/german-meteorology-professor-expects-cooling-for-the-decades-ahead-climate-protection-is-ineffective/

56. oldbrew says:

How does the Foucault pendulum align itself with ‘the rest of the universe’?

http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/pendulum/pendulum.htm

57. tchannon says:

This is very similar to a small nuclear explosion.

First damage is from thermal flux, then the shockwave, widespread injury from (supersonic) flying glass. This was the case at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Being winter in Russia spared many more from injury but on the other hand there were no blackout or blast curtains at the windows. Not being used to aerial war the Russians did the wrong thing, bright wierd light, drop to the floor and cover, very brief time before the shockwave, don’t look.

58. Ian W says:

tchannon says:
February 15, 2013 at 9:07 pm

“….bright wierd light, drop to the floor and cover, very brief time before the shockwave, don’t look.”

And stay down and covered until after the second ‘drawback’ shockwave’

59. oldbrew says:

Just launched by NASA: a satellite with a Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS).

“The QWIPs TIRS uses are sensitive to two thermal infrared wavelength bands, helping it separate the temperature of the Earth’s surface from that of the atmosphere. Their design operates on the complex principles of quantum mechanics. Gallium arsenide semiconductor chips trap electrons in an energy state ‘well’ until the electrons are elevated to a higher state by thermal infrared light of a certain wavelength. The elevated electrons create an electrical signal that can be read out and recorded to create a digital image.”

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/landsat/main/LDCM_TIRS_intro.html

60. oldbrew says:

Science News reports: ‘NASA Deciphering the Mysterious Math of the Solar Wind’

‘until now, equations for certain aspects of the solar wind have never been successfully devised to correlate to the observations seen by instruments in space. Now, for the first time, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., has created a set of the necessary equations, published in Physical Review Letters on Dec. 4, 2012.’

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130221214615.htm

61. mwhite says:

“The energy company EDF is seeking more than £5m in damages from a group of more than 20 activists who occupied one of its power stations for a week last year,”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/feb/20/activists-police-edf-law-suit

62. J Martin says:

@mwhite.

EDF should be suing those responsible for brainwashing the young naive gullible (and low intelligence) idealists in this film. The subjects of their writ should be James Hansen, Michael Mann, and Al Gore.

This also has the advantage that they could actually recover their £5 million since very clearly the young fools in this film do not have £5 million.

63. oldbrew says:

Patchy throws the towel in on skeptic-bashing. Plan B: kick the global warming can down the road for another 20 years.

http://www.thegwpf.org/jo-nova-pachauris-u-turn-means-climate-sceptics-winning-debate/

64. Gray says:

Siberian Town records -71.2C (Northern Hemisphere Record Low?) This seems solid info but needs checking…

http://notrickszone.com/2013/02/23/northern-hemisphere-sets-new-all-time-record-cold-temperature-96-1f-in-oymyakon-siberia/

65. Gray says:

Treat story above Siberian Weather Record with caution. Not confirmed…

66. Gray says:

On a lighter note 🙂

67. Craig M says:

George Monbiot:

“protest is of no democratic value unless it is effective. It must disturb and challenge those at whom it is aimed. It must arouse and motivate those who watch. The climate change campaigners trying to prevent a new dash for gas wrote to their MPs, emailed the power companies, marched and lobbied. They were ignored. So last year 17 of them climbed the chimney of the West Burton power station and occupied it for a week.”

http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/25/edf-west-burton-streisand-effect

Does this mean if we protest against the blight of windfarms by strapping ourselves to them/removing bolts etc we are partaking in valid protest/democracy? We are afterall defending the environment against big energy interests.

[Reply] Good point. I’m awaiting developments with interest.

68. Scute says:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/02/rain-clouds

WUWT had something on this. The Economist always writes engagingly about this stuff.

69. http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/01mar_twinpeaks/

Graphology psychological study :
Beginning of article :
“Something unexpected is happening on the sun.”
..

….
End of article :
“No one knows for sure what the sun will do next”

🙂

70. Doug Proctor says:

Hi, Roger,

This is a followup to an old post whose subject has come up again. Since recently I was at the Mauna Loa site where the data comes from, I have a particular interest in studies that have come from there. In this case it has to do with green laser beams that are fired vertically to measure stratospheric aerosols/particulars. Recently, as shown on WWUT this weeks, there are claims that mid-size volcanic emissions into the stratosphere are responsible for the non-warming since 1998.

Earlier, Judith Curry [see 1, below] carried a good commentary on the subject of warmist scientists responded to the question of non-warming since 1998. Curry was responding to an article by Paul Voosen [2]. Curry pointed out the lack of certainty evidenced by specific comments. Voosen complained in a comment that she misinterpreted the comments.

The difference in view is very interesting, and very significant.

The original article by Voosen is excellent. I recommend all read it. His complaint that Curry twists the direction of his article is both correct and incorrect: he was writing, essentially, from a pro-warmist point. He wished to put a nuance to the planetary problem of carbon dioxide emissions. The Curry treatment turned his position on its head.

Voosen was correct in this. He took her supportive article and used it to question the premise of planetary overheating due to anthropogenic carbon dioxide additions. But he was wrong in saying she misinterpreted the comments he provided. Indeed, they demonstrate that the science of AGW is not settled, and the remaining questions of the power of CO2 are funndamental to whether we have a crisis of not.

The key is that each scientist’s speaks from the viewpoint of his/her own specialty. As I have protested repeatedly (here and elsewhere), CAGW models have benefit-of-the-doubt built in to all the parameters which, combined, individually are “reasonable”, but collectively unreasonable (situations I deal with every day in my oil and gas exploration profession). The Voosen article, if broken down by parameter, shows this clearly.

Fundamentally Voosen makes the mistake many non-technical people make about technical matters. Details are often the substance, not the peripherals of a subject. For CAGW to be “catastrophic” or largely irrelevant, the questions of parts of a degree per decade – the details of radiative forcing – count.

Having said that, there is one portion I have picked out for special treatment: a comment Voosen makes with respect to work done by Robert Kaufman (which interestingly enough, has Mann as a contributor)

In the article, I pick out the following in particular:

“During the 1980s and ’90s, the rapid decline of air pollution in the United States and Europe dominated the world’s aerosol trends. While those emissions have continued to decline in the West, returns, from a brightening standpoint, have diminished, just as coal combustion ramped up in Asia. It’s not that the world is getting dimmer again; it’s that it’s no longer getting brighter.”

This is a critical comment. If the world were getting “brighter” during the ’80s and ’90s as a result of non-Chinese aerosol controls, then the temperature rise during that time is, indeed, largely solar. The modelling done claimed that CO2 was responsible for the majority of that, perhaps meaning >90%. If the brighter factor is true, then actual CO2 influences are not what shown even for that period.

Taking the aerosol – or volcanic emanation, it doesn’t matter which – as cooling factor, means that CO2 forcing was overestimated during the post 1975, pre-98 period, and overestimated during the post-98 period. The difference in model vs actual radiative forcing is equal to the reduced reflectivity of the atmosphere of pre-98 and increased reflectivity of post-98.

Two equations, opposite directions, which should limit the range of possibilities nicely. At the same time we could include the post-9/11 data over the USA due to all flights being shut down for several days. During this time contrail and aerosols in the atmosphere noticeably decreased, leading to brighter skys and increased ground-level insolation. That gives us three equations to consider for aerosol cooling, three that subtract from the IPCC radiative forcing model(s) for CO2.

[2: Candid Comments paper by Paul Voosen http://www.eenews.net/public/Greenwire/2011/10/25/1%5D

[ 3: Reconciling anthropogenic climate change with observed temperature 1998–2008
Robert K. Kaufmanna,1, Heikki Kauppib, Michael L. Manna, and James H. Stockc
Author Affiliations Edited by Robert E. Dickinson, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, and approved June 2, 2011 (received for review February 16, 2011)]

Regards,

Doug Proctor

71. Gray says:

Did the SSN monthly just drop to:

2013.123 38.0 *

72. […] is content promoted from Suggestions to a full […]

73. oldbrew says:

Wimps ahoy – dark matter bulletin due any time now.

http://www.sott.net/article/258559-Has-Dark-Matter-Finally-Been-Found-Big-News-Coming-Soon

74. Doug Proctor says:

Hi, Rog,

Thanks for the upgrade!

Here’s something funny: http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/solar/

Mauna Loa Apparent Transmission graphic has just changed. Went to Mauna Loa site, the graphic you clicked before is still the old one, but the new one comes up.

They have “cleaned” the image, took out all the volcanic variations. So now you see what they say it was SUPPOSED to be, not what it was.

But … is that not what the APPARENT transmission is supposed to show, what it was, regardless of cause?

Why would they do this, except to remove any data that could be reinterpreted about solar variation.

I copied the data, but is it the raw data or the cleaned data? I haven’t had time to plot it and see.

75. Gray says:

Hi tallbloke, I keep having my browser crash when on Phi Discovery. It may be a handling issue with animated gifs if anyone has uploaded one.

[tim writes: someone else has browser issues unknown location, looking into things… so busy I haven’t even read the site today –Tim]

76. A climate model where the output resembles the UKMO for the next five years but in their own words:

“The presented climate-forcing study proceeds with the selection of 10,000 years of the entire Holocene interglacial and, for comparison, of another 10,000 years of a purely glacial time span (37,000-27,000 BP) from the GISP2 data. It considers the effects of Milankovitch cycles, atmospheric CO2-concentrations, Solar Inertial Motions (SIM), the retrograde tri-synodic Jupiter/Saturn cycle, and of two major mechanisms, the Earth Orbit Oscillation (EOO) and the Cosmic Impact Oscillation (CIO). Detailed mechanisms for both oscillations are provided; their calculation methods are pointed out.”
http://www.knowledgeminer.eu/store/eoo_paper.html

[Reply] Hi Lord B. We covered this one a while back and found it didn’t stack up.
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/10/09/joachim-seifert-and-frank-lemke-new-cosmo-climate-theory/

77. Doug Proctor says:

WRT recent paper showing we are almost as warm as the warmest since the end of the last glacial:

Apples and Oranges?

Various temperature profiles have been created showing that the warming of the last 100+ years is anomalous in how fast it has occurred and, according to some, resulted in a temperature higher than the last 11,000-odd years. Yet are we not comparing two datasets, the post-1880 period being a high density, precise and accurate instrumental reading to a pre-1880 dataset that becomes leaner, less precise and less accurate the further we go back?

The question is this: due to how temperature data is preserved, is not the data representing a100-year period of a thousand years ago a smeared, averaged value with highs and lows of some period, perhaps 70 years (I’m thinking ice core)? In effect, is not older temperature profiles a graph with a 70-year running average applies to it?

What would happen to the last 200 years if we were to put the recent data into a 70-year running average so that we were comparing apples to apples?

Is it possible or even probable that we have lost the high amplitude, high frequency data for the past, that would have shown, had it survived, that the past had many periods of high rates of temperature rise and fall similar to today, in times where CO2 shows no signs of similar rises and falls?

78. ‘Layer clouds are globally extensive. Their lower edges are charged negatively by the fair weather atmospheric electricity current flowing vertically through them./…../ This suggests that the global fair weather current, which is affected by space weather, cosmic rays and the El Niño Southern Oscillation, is linked with layer cloud properties.’
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/1/015027/article

79. Roger Andrews says:

Video presentation on climate change & desertification over at WUWT, direct link here:

Well worth watching

80. A C Osborn says:

Have you seen this NASA article about Solar Wind, it might fit somewhere in your great scheme of things Non CO2 climate theories.
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=11284

[mod: I have emailed a question to someone to see if they have any comment –Tim]

81. Doug Proctor says:

http://www.biomassenergycentre.org.uk/portal/page?_pageid=75,20041&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL

Wood chips vs coal:

energy content: 3.5 vs 8.0 (7.5 – 8.6) kWhr/kg. Ratio: 0.438
density: 250 vs 850 kg/m3. Ratio: 0.294

Relative energy wood chips vs coal per unit mass: Ratio: 0.129

To replace the heating value of 1 tonne of coal you need 7.75 tonnes of wood chip (inverse of 0.129).

To produce the previous power level of 36,000 tonnes of coal per day, requiring 2 traincars of coal per day (140 traincars per week), DRAX will require approximately 279,000 tonnes of wood chips and 15.5 trainloads of chips per day, or 1960 trainloads per week.

Worse than I thought.

Bet DRAX can’t handle that many trainloads. So the whole thing is suspicious.

(One summer I worked in the far North. We were trying to figure out how long we would be kept there, talked about budgets, weather etc., and an older hand pointed out the window to the storage area of jet fuel for our helicopter. He said, “When that runs out, we get out.” He was right. He had identified the limiting factor. Perhaps the limiting factor is the number of trainloads of wood chips.)

Lot of potential money for train companies though.

I knew the man who arranged for the ships to bring all the gravel for Canary Wharf (near London, right?). He just arranged for the ship rentals and came off about 7 million richer. Whoever simply owns the ships and gets a 20-year contract for their use. Remember Robocop II, where the young turk gets his new robots in over the old guy’s objections, saying his worked and the old guy’s didn’t? Washroom conversation. Old guy is furious: I KNOW they don’t work. I got a 20-year maintenance contract in the deal! [Reply] 2 traincars per day is 14 per week not 140 isn’t it? 82. Doug Proctor says: I can’t believe what a moron I can be with a calculator. 140 trainloads/week is 20/day. 7.75 X 20 is 155 trainloads/day, and 1085 trainloads per week. Jeez. There is a brain-freeze associated with computer typing, the heat of melting coming from pushing the “send” key. Doug, with apologies. [Reply] Heh, no problem, thanks for the recalcs. I’ll probably work up a post on this. 83. Doug Proctor says: Another point wrt DRAX switch-over to wood chips: Any powerplant must have on-site a certain number of days of fuel in case of snowstorms, hurricanes etc. Because of the 7.75 volume ratio, that means that more storage facilities for wood chips will have to be on-site than they have right now. Keeping the wood chips dry will be an issue of course, but more than that, the power plant and the locals may have a problem with a veritable nuclear bomb worth of combustible material in constant storage nearby. Even if they reduce their emergency storage volume, it will still be physically bigger than befor. With more “bins” there will be a greater probability of fire regardless of the incresed combustibility of wood. A whole different fire response will be required due to the danger of wood chip ignition vs coal (coal does self-ignite, but we have huge experience with avoiding it and handling it. Except underground.) A check on what DRAX has for emergency fuel supplies will identify the level of this problem. Sawmills on fire don’t just burn. They explode: nearby wood heats and releases combustible gas es and then, at ignition temperatures, the entire woodpile goes at once. A mountain of coal doesn’t do this. 84. richardcfromnz says: Hi Roger. Further to my suggestion on February 6, 2013 at 8:34 pm that Tim advised might be more of interest to you either just FYI or for Talkshop use, I’ve written up a 3 part series documenting the views and critiquing the anthropogenic ocean heating mechanisms put forward by Skeptical Science, the IPCC, Stefan Rahmstorf, Andreas Schmittner, and Dana Nuccitelli:- Anthropogenic Ocean Heating? Part 1: Skeptical Science Offside (v2) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Kol9es16MgoyxdL_4f2jwf1Bxqp6CyOtQnSCfNC-j6U/edit?usp=sharing Part 2: The Improbable IPCC Mechanism https://docs.google.com/document/d/1S91YV1Z8aT-qD9Ydj_kn8JAM3R-l-H5eK9LZwMuAsOE/edit?usp=sharing Part 3: Rahmstorf, Schmittner and Nuccitelli https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KRTABbfREFs-1bYfzUdLzikf22N_Dp2wbBBQXzCfb5c/edit?usp=sharing Ctrl c/v to copy/paste. Please report any typos, broken links, dumb stuff etc. I have sent this series to Joanne Nova and posted it in the ‘Skeptical Science’ and ‘Ocean Heat Content’ Open Threads at Climate Conversation Group. Whether Richard Treadgold, Jo or yourself run with it is up to yourselves but I’m sure you will agree this is worth knowing about. Cheers Richard Cumming (NZ) 85. Bill McIntyre says: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation up dated feb 13 2013 In the section for “next glacial period” Wiki says: “the interglacial period the earth is in now may persist for another 50,000 years if CO2 levels increase to 750 PPM” I was surprised to see wiki make that statement!! I assume this would be a result of extra plant growth maintaining a low albiedo while adapting to dryer conditions. The 750 PPM is at the top end of recommended (economic) levels for Greenhouse production. It also coincides with “maximum limits” proposed for submarine environs – – but “seasoned” crews regularly overshoot that limit. or use search words: Omafra CO2 in Greenhouses. 86. oldbrew says: Matt Ridley shows an audience why fossil fuels are a benefit not a curse, whereas biofuels…oh dear. “How Fossil Fuels are Greening the Planet” (warning: entertainment ahead). http://climaterealists.com/?id=11317 87. oldbrew says: Van Allen Probes Reveal A New Radiation Belt Around Earth ““We thought we knew the radiation belts, but we don’t. The advances in technology and detection made by NASA in this mission already have had an almost immediate impact on basic science.” http://vanallenprobes.jhuapl.edu/newscenter/newsArticles/20130228_2.php 88. coldfinger says: Tallbloke, re my comments on the Delingpole blog, I don’t have the whole story, only what was connected to the link from google http://www.google.com/news?ncl=dcbxTbz75sXat3MK0Rc59bNv-UeCM&q=climategate&lr=English&hl=en “Who Released The Climategate Emails And Why Forbes – 1 hour ago No, it wasn’t a conspiracy plotted by Big Oil or Republican operatives using mercenary hackers after all. And unless you happen to get all your news from the mainstream media, you will undoubtedly recognize that by “Climategate”, I’m referring here to the …” and the link to the missing page: http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/03/15/who-released-the-climategate-emails-and-why/ Coldfinger [Reply] Thanks, story posted anyway. 89. Here’s an existential question to which I don’t know the answer. Is the whole global warming schtick over? – Andrew Neil 90. A C Osborn says: Rog, have you seen this on jeff’s site? Have you also had a letter? http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2013/03/19/345-7/ 91. Ian W says: A C Osborn says: March 19, 2013 at 5:49 pm Rog, have you seen this on jeff’s site? Have you also had a letter? http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2013/03/19/345-7/ I have just replied to this on Jeff’s site as follows: Ian W said March 19, 2013 at 2:24 pm It would seem that the time has come for an FOIA request to UAE asking them for the information in the very first FOIA request that they Dr Jones was found guilty of refusing albeit after the statute of limitations. Another FOIA request would be for all exchanges with Dr Mann that provided advice on how to present data for publication and for provision to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change etc. These would seem to be appropriate requests for real information. What was it that in the CG files that the ‘Team’ were trying to hide? Ask for it in a formal FOIA request. We KNOW that it is there and they know that we know it is there – the Norfolk Police know that the information is there. If the request is made as a formal FOIA to Dr Jones, he would really be playing with fire to mess about after only escaping due to the lethargy of the system. Hoist them on their own legal petard. Do not publish the information. When a nugget is found issue a FOIA request for them to publish it suitably indirectly but unambiguously worded. Then _they_ are the publishers and they are in a bind trying to refuse as they know that the data is outside their control and that everyone knows that they ‘have their server back’. Ian W 92. oldbrew says: The letter just says ‘there is a very real danger that personal data will be disclosed in breach of the Data Protection Act.” That doesn’t appear to prevent climate matters being published, as long as nobody’s private details e.g. e-mail address appear in the public space. Best check with a legal type first though. 93. Roy Martin says: Hi Roger, Thank you for posting my note on how the planets affect the Sun. Relatively few comments, but feedback most helpful, as always. After my final comment about the influence of the individual planets on barycentric motion I decided to go a little further with that last thought, and came up with a different graph simulation the barycentric motion of the Sun, which is very much closer to reality. This meant that it was too hard to make sensible further comments or put up additional material a within that thread. Instead, I have extensively rewritten the note, particularly the second half. I believe the revised version is is also probably worth posting. Have a look if you have time away from your present travails. Links to the revised versions: http://www.climatestop.com/Planets_gravitational_and_tidal_effect_on_the_Sun_02.odt All illustrations are on the server as jpg images. A new Figure 3. has been added, and Figures 3a and 3b have been replaced by Figure 4.: Note that to avoid any possible confusion I have removed the earlier versions from the server. Regards, Roy M. [reply] Thanks Roy, posted here: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/roy-martin-how-do-the-planets-affect-the-sun-updated/comment-page-1/ 94. Steve Richards says: Roger, You really should repost this from jo novas blog re Lord Monckton; fighting talk and he gives the reasons why…. http://joannenova.com.au/2013/03/monckton-explains-why-taking-climate-extremists-to-court-works-and-uni-tas-agrees-to-investigate/ [Reply] I’m trying to concentrate on science, but keep getting dragged into the politics… 95. A C Osborn says: Roger, this paper on the Hockey Schtick appears to support Svensmark. http://www.clim-past.net/9/811/2013/cp-9-811-2013.html 96. Roger Andrews says: For those who have long suspected that “green jobs” are a scam: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/green-jobs-havent-lived-up-to-obamas-promise-2013-03-22?link=MW_story_investinginsight 97. Craig M says: Not that I expected more but this really annoyed me with the front to say this when thousands are dying across Europe from predictable conditions that have zero relation to CO2. Desperate and dangerous rats in the corner. The UK government’s chief scientist has said that there is already enough CO2 in the atmosphere for there to be more floods and droughts over the next 25 years. The [current] variation we are seeing in temperature or rainfall is double the rate of the average. That suggests that we are going to have more droughts, we are going to have more floods, we are going to have more sea surges and we are going to have more storms…”These are the sort of changes that are going to affect us in quite a short timescale,” he warned…[on sceptics]… Prof Beddington’s blunt response is: “The evidence that climate change is happening is completely unequivocal.” Disgusting, shamefull comments from a politician pretending to be a scientist. [Reply] It’s his last howl before leaving the job. I’m putting up a new post for the new chief advisor. 98. Craig M says: Further….I wonder if they are completely aware low solar activity will cause the extremes and have hijacked for the cause. I keep mentioning ~1880s which had exactly tje conditions Prof B says are CO2 but they happened pre CO2. Funny also that Ulric, Piers and even lowly me picked out the cold March (I said top ten last 100yrs on 17 Feb on a post here) but I guess if it happened before it doesn’t happen again unless we add the Mighty Secrey CO2 formula which predicts everything!!!! I share your anger TB. The time of being nice has clearly passed. Calling them murderers (as Willis E did also) is not as extreme as it may have sounded before. [Reply] Well, I didn’t go as far as that, but I certainly see there being a ‘corporate manslaughter’ element to the way excess winter deaths are being allowed to rack up. 99. Craig M says: Thanks for reply TB just to make clear I was not suggesting you said Redrum and Corporate Manslaughter is the best definition tho redrum us to me more appropriate 😉 “According to Francis and a growing body of other researchers, the Arctic ice loss adds heat to the ocean and atmosphere which shifts the position of the jet stream – the high-altitude river of air that steers storm systems and governs most weather in northern hemisphere.” http://m.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/mar/25/frozen-spring-arctic-sea-ice-loss Am I mistaken that No mechanism as such has ever been proposed for CO2 to shift the JS as has been proposed bar the bland hindsight/hindforecast? I also would mention the records from Admiralty noting loss of sea ice during last LIA and that Stephen W has been banging on about this – quite rightly – for a long time, before the warmist volte faceto encompass all weather to fit the CO2 meme? No doubt current Northern Hemisphere cold has resulted in unprecedented straw clutching? Tim C has oft mentioned the amplitude change in Arctic – is this result percolating down? 100. Ian W says: Can I ask the ‘brains trust’ a simple question. Nitrogen and Oxygen which make up most of the atmosphere are ‘non-radiative’ gases. So – if I have a volume of Nitrogen and Oxygen say in a 75%/25% mix that is at around say 300K. I will see no infra-red radiation from it. What happens if I add some Carbon Dioxide to that volume of Nitrogen and Oxygen? Would I start to see infra-red from the Carbon Dioxide as it was ‘warmed’ by multiple collisions with the non-radiative gases? Just a simple question – I promise, no top spin. It seemed to me that part of the activity of Carbon Dioxide is missed. 101. Sparks says: Ian W says: March 25, 2013 at 6:44 pm Carbon Dioxide doesn’t give of Infrared radiation it transports the Infrared radiation it is exposed to. Infrared has a wavelength between 0.8 micrometers and 1 millimeter, so if you have a mixture of Nitrogen and Oxygen at 300k the wavelength of interest is about 400 times the size of a carbon dioxide molecule and the Interaction is via electric field a molecule’s electric charge and this mole fraction measurement is known, it can be worked out by measuring the electrical resistivity of the carbon dioxide by passing a beam at this wavelength through the mixture of Nitrogen and Oxygen and detecting electrical changes in a detector calibrated to that wave length, if you increase the Carbon-dioxide in the mixture, the measured mole-fraction increases Via the change in electrical resistivity, You will notice; as the mole-fraction increases the temperature of the mixture of Nitrogen and Oxygen remains at 300k. Basically you will have a mixture of gas at a temperature of 300k with an increased mole-fraction measurement of Carbon dioxide by measuring the Carbon dioxide. 102. Ian W says: Sparks, Thank you for your response. So a carbon dioxide molecule can be ‘excited’ by a photon of infrared and if it is involved in a collision with a nitrogen or oxygen molecule before ‘re-emitting’ the energy it passes the energy it received from the photon to the colliding molecule as kinetic energy, But the reverse is not true. Is that correct? 103. tallbloke says: Gents, this is the suggestions page. Please take this discussion to a relevant thread: 104. oldbrew says: Bishop Hill flags this Economist feature: ‘The mismatch between rising greenhouse-gas emissions and not-rising temperatures is among the biggest puzzles in climate science just now’ http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/3/27/the-economist-on-climate-sensitivity.html BH says: ‘This is an absolute must-read. Wow.’ 105. Gray says: By Roger Harrabin http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21967190 Last spring’s forecast has been obtained by BBC News under Freedom of Information. The Met Office three-monthly outlook at the end of March stated: “The forecast for average UK rainfall slightly favours drier than average conditions for April-May-June, and slightly favours April being the driest of the three months.” A soul-searching Met Office analysis later confessed: “Given that April was the wettest since detailed records began in 1910 and the April-May-June quarter was also the wettest, this advice was not helpful.” In a note to the government chief scientist, the Met Office chief scientist Prof Julia Slingo explains the difficulty of constructing long-distance forecasts, given the UK’s position at the far edge of dominant world weather systems. She says last year’s calculations were not actually wrong because they were probabilistic. The Met Office explained it this way: “The probabilistic forecast can be considered as somewhat like a form guide for a horse race.” 106. […] on Talkshop Suggestions Gray quotes nicely so here it […] 107. Sparks says: Rog, I been working hard on a better description but I’m not finished yet, I begun working on visuals and some model animations to help better get across the idea, It has took me in a new direction with something else I’m working on, so I’ve had to put it down and come back to it. Here is one of the model animations, this is a Heliocentric view of the solar system showing the Jupiter and Uranus conjunction (or harmonic kiss) every 13.8 years going back in time from 2010 to 1183 AD, as you can see the conjunction is very well synchronized at first, as the step continues, over a longer period of time the distance between Jupiter and Uranus increases and then gradually decreases, the change in distance between Jupiter and Uranus is what I have been calling a precession. When this value of the precession is accounted for, the Jupiter and Uranus conjunction of every 13.8 years fits exactly to the Sunspot record during solar minimum. I will go into me detail and how it is worked out when I’m finished. Jupiter and Uranus Heliocentric 13.8 year step from 1/9/2010 – 14/3/1183 AD 108. oldbrew says: Dr Abdussamatov has now made it into the UK national press. He heads a Russian space research organisation. ‘As Arctic Britain prepares to shiver for at least another month, a leading scientist today predicted the world was heading for another Ice Age.’ http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=11420&linkbox=true&position=1 He has been saying similar things for years and so far is on track. https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/suggestions-3/comment-page-1/#comment-43623 109. Sparks says: I just posted a historical link to William Tell, Neptune mystery surrounding a rare heliocentric planetary alignment of Neptune, Uranus, Jupiter, Saturn the sun and Earth that happened around 1306. http://thetempestspark.wordpress.com/2013/04/05/heliocentric-planetary-alignment-1305-1307-historical-mystery/ 110. Doug Proctor says: I’d like to suggest a new Climate Wars term, I describe on WUWT today (wrt non-acceleration of sea-level rises) as a “Trenberth Event”, or TEs, named, as you will see, after Kevin Trenberth of the wet side of the Consensus Climate Team. Trenberth Events: noun. Short-form: TE. Definition: An observation contrary to expectation that leads to the refutation of the observation rather than the revision of expectations. Of particular importance during Witchcraft and Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming manias. Detailed Description: There are two types of T. One, called Negative, is an observation (event) that has not been observed but is predicted to exist by a model. The other, called, Positive, is an observation (event) that has been observed but is predicted not to exist by a model. The Event leads to more than a simple contradiction to the the established (consensus) opinion. The Event leads to strident remarks that observations, not the model or opinion, are in error. Furthermore, when we are dealing with a TE, serious effort is made to find work-arounds to explain away the disconnect or even to discredit the source of the problem observations. The sea-level non-acceleration of this article is a Negative Trenberth Event. The sea-level is supposed to be accelerating in its rise. The non-warming of the mid-tropospheric is another. Both are supposed to exist, but do not. In both these cases, observation has been deemed faulty: tidal guages are inadequate in the first, and millions of balloon radiosondes in the other. A third is the non-projected rise in oceanic heat content (Trenberth’s missing heat): the answer is that the thousands of Argo floats are not sampling deep enough. An example of a Positive Trenberth Event is the increase in mass and ice area of Antarctica. It has observed, but shouldn’t have happened. An increase in cloud-seeing nuclei (even if small) with gamma ray radiation should not have happened at CERN, but did. That is an established Positive TE, and was met with the reply that the nuclei were too small and NO, we aren’t doing follow-up tests to determine if the small will grow to the large. The original researchers, after all, are denialist idiots. A possible Positive TE is occurring right now, in that temperatures are dropping and cloud cover is increasing (at least in the European part of the NH) as sunspot activity has slowed down; we need more data to know if this is global or regional. We already have Al Gore saying that the idea the sun is responsible is BS, and that it doesn’t matter that Europe is cold because the open “warm” Arctic water (from whence the “cold” comes) caused it. Besides, it’s been a mild winter in the mid-continental US of A. So there. Trenberth Events are a prime feature of the current CAGW argument. When a TE is upon the scene, alarm bells ring and the Climate Team leap about like the teenage “fire drills” in which everyone leaps out of a car stopped in traffic at a red light, runs madly around the car while bystanders gawk, only to leap back in when the light changes and drive away laughing hysterically. Use of this term can both simplify the debate and focus attention on the key item. A TE by definition contains an observation that contradicts a narrative; its explanation or confirmation eliminate one or the other side of the debate. A TE also contains an emotional, quasi-violent response by the consensus-holder; this attribute of anger needs to be recognized before it can be eliminated. 111. Roger Andrews says: Doug Proctor: Excellent! But credit where credit is due. Tom Wigley identified, and reported the successful resolution of, a classic Trenberth Event over three years before Trenberth codified the phenomenon. From the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, Synthesis and Assessment Product 1.1, Executive Summary, April 2006: “Previously reported discrepancies between the amount of warming near the surface and higher in the atmosphere have been used to challenge the reliability of climate models and the reality of human-induced global warming. Specifically, surface data showed substantial global-average warming while early versions of satellite and radiosonde data showed little or no warming above the surface. This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected.” 112. A C Osborn says: Roger, against your advice I try to persevere with Adam on his site as I like a challenge and J Martin needed some help. But I have finally got just too pissed off with his attitude and gave it to him with both barrels. I should be ashamed of myself at 66 and have more patience, but instead I am turning into Victor Meldrew and a Grumpy Old Git. 113. J Martin says: ACO. Likewise. It was an interesting experience and shows how most people are completely unable to open their minds to contrary evidence once they have adopted an essentially emotional position. This is a well documented psychological phenomenon. It does demonstrate how hard it is to convince people the ‘consensus’ has got it wrong, back to front even. And yet it is known that populations can change their positions on subjects and that that swing can be quite rapid. I don’t doubt that the onset of a minimum will do it in this case. I suspect that most people are essentially unable to think for themselves, and so they need to be told what to think, largely by the press and other organisations. The press however, are more interested in sales and image and as such like to see themselves as performing an important and useful role in society, whilst at the same time relying on as much drama and alarmism as they can get in order to stimulate sales. The mass of the people confuse climate and the weather and as such are more influenced by local and recent weather experience than by facts and figures. I think that this combination of how the people are influenced by the weather and the media’s lust for dramatic headlines means that once a prolonged fall in temperatures starts to produce cold winters and poor summers that a simultaneous swing in the opinions of the masses and the media will take place. But there are signs that the media is beginning to change sides already and this is a most interesting development considering that temperatures have essentially flat lined and a significant fall in temperatures is still a few years away. Perhaps not all newspaper editors are gullible herd animals after all. At the end of the day, one can only keep chipping away, presenting contrary evidence for so called climate change in as clear a fashion as possible and hope that it sparks something, maybe only after a period of time. It is quite often the case that something that causes one to change ones mind is a fact picked up some while earlier, and that it takes time to absorb and deal with the implications of this. People are reluctant to change their fondly held beliefs as they see it as representing how they see themselves. And in this particular case even though Adam had been given information which clearly invalidated the climate models, and even the information that the high priests of climate change had publicly admitted the failure of the models, he was unable to confront the implications of this and so rejected all such evidence and clung to his belief that some random scientist should shape his opinions for him, though he had carefully chosen two true believers in global warming whose analysis of the situation was non existent and a mere parroting of the official line. Sadly, all too often, changing peoples minds is not about facts, but about psychology. I guess in retrospect my attempts to open Adam’s mind by presenting facts were doomed to failure. No doubt a more subtle approach is required and would need the input of a psychologist to oversee what facts were used and how they were presented. Indeed I have seen interesting articles in the press explaining how government advertising targeting drug advice to teenagers was doomed to failure as they had not taken the psychology of the target group into account and in particular had not examined the reasons why that group took drugs in the first place. it was an extremely cogent analysis. And so the government paid for a TV advertising campaign which laid out the relevant facts as the government saw it, little realising that it would have no effect whatsoever since it didn’t relate in any way to how the target group saw the situation. We need psychologists to present our case. Either that or most people have a disproportionate number of Ostrich genes. 114. J Martin says: Adam chose two warmist disciples as his internal justification for his herd instinct views. Even if he had been presented with two scientists of far greater stature than the one he chose he would still not have changed his position. Richard Feynman and Freeman Dyson are both recognised as scientists of far greater stature, and both are dismissive of the view that co2 represented a danger to mankind or the climate. Adam is just one of an endless number of idealistic and therefore easily brainwashed young fools. – – – – – – – – In my post above this one I described newspaper editors as gullible herd animals. I feel I may have been somewhat generous towards them but that a more appropriate description may be held to be libellous in a court of law. 115. A C Osborn says: JR, stop wasting your time, he just makes up the rules to suit himself, you can never win. Especially as he just keeps quoting RealClimate of all blogs. 116. A C Osborn says: He gives us 2 USA Warmist Scientists and Real Climate, I gave hi m over 20 European Sceptic Scientists, 4 of the German. I gave him plenty of reasons why there is a so called consensus and showed him it didn’t exist. We both gave him examples of why the science is wrong, he does not want to listen, just score browny points. All the time that he knocks down your posts with RealClimate you just waste your valuable time. 117. J Martin says: Yes I have left it now. I think that no matter how clear and convincing a set of facts are, people are for the most part unable to make a dramatic about turn in their opinions in a short time frame, especially those which are strongly and emotionally held. He may one day come to realise that he has been mislead in his views, but it will probably take several months at best, and perhaps even years, this process will be helped by a drop in temperatures. I left him with a question that he needs to ask himself, and that is how deep and how prolonged a drop in temperatures would it take for him to change his views. Such a concept is probably beyond him and most died in the wool co2 converts, as they have been so conditioned by the mass hysteria of the press and the politicians. Several increasingly cold winters and indifferent summers are probably required before his psyche will be able to even begin to entertain the question. As of right now the idea that temperatures are going to fall is quite beyond his comprehension. 118. Doug Proctor says: Roger: My Scottish mother was disparaging of those who would “wiggle out of” a foolish situation they had created. Perhaps the term really was “wigle-ing out”. She just made a spelling mistake. 119. Roger Andrews says: Doug: As far as Wigley was concerned he didn’t have to wiggle(y) his way out of anything. Global warming was reality and the reliability of climate models was beyond dispute, so the satellite and radiosonde data must have been wrong. No other interpretation was possible. He sincerely believed (and probably still does) that he was advancing the science by making them “right”. 120. “If conventional theory fails to explain electrical storms it cannot be used to discount the results of ionization experiments. Instead, conventional theory suffers doubts about its basic plausibility. Weather experts have a limited view of the electrical nature of the Earth and its environment. The ‘enormous power input’ is freely available from the galaxy. That galactic electrical power drives the weather systems on all of the planets and even the Sun.” http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2013/04/07/let-it-rain/ Also leading to an interesting link about measuring the atmospheric electric field: http://www.missioninstruments.com/pages/learning/elec_fields.html 121. Ian W says: Mlynczak is the associate principal investigator for the SABER instrument onboard NASA’s TIMED satellite. SABER monitors infrared emissions from Earth’s upper atmosphere, in particular from carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitric oxide (NO), two substances that play a key role in the energy balance of air hundreds of km above our planet’s surface. Carbon dioxide and nitric oxide are natural thermostats,” explains James Russell of Hampton University, SABER’s principal investigator. “When the upper atmosphere (or ‘thermosphere’) heats up, these molecules try as hard as they can to shed that heat back into space.” http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/22mar_saber/ Interesting [co-mod: This stuff is interesting, the spin and anima from NASA is not. I’ll think on whether we can run with this. –Tim] 122. J Martin says: On a solar thread on WUWT, Leif said; lsvalgaard says: April 9, 2013 at 1:51 pm The Sun does influence the climate to a minor extent [nobody denies that], the issue is whether [as most here seems to think] that the sun is a MAJOR driver of climate which it clearly is not [Jupiter is], regardless of all the wishful thinking that goes on. I find his comment interesting, and I wonder if he is referring to the 189 (?) year cycle between Jupiter and Saturn (if I got that right) , of he might be rather mysteriously referring to some other cycle of Jupiter and what, the Earth ? 123. Doug Proctor says: Thanks Roger for your comments. An honest belief is not something to disparage. I was being mean; the us-vs-them situation encourages that. I shouldn’t have. Now, if it were Mann I was talking about, his behaviour suits snappy comments. My apologies to Wigley in absentia. On another topic: I had a different idea I thought to run by you guys: With the modern temp data, I’ve interpreted theyear-to year variability as a function both of noise and nature. Recently the variability as per GISTemp has reduced; I’ve interpreted this as data capture, a sign of increasing accuracy and precision. However, I was looking at the solar data and noticed that for various types of data you have a decreasing amplitude of variability as you approach minimums, TSI, magnetics, solar number etc. I wondered if you see a change in range of variablity in ALL systems as they approach a node or cross-over point. A bouncing ball does this, with only one side of a “cycle” of course. But so does an interference of two waves as they approach nodes of constructive and destructive interference The idea is this: if we are approaching a roll-over in temperatures under such a variability situation as addressed above, should we see a reduction in variability that is real, not a function of data handling or gathering? So that the last 15 years of the GISTemp graph shows evidence that global warming is coming to an end (of a cycle, at least)? Year to year variability plotted against time would show if we are changing the variability magnitude as my eyeball seems to show. Now, on a related idea, that a certain range of temperatures is “normal”, that the past can be used to represent the present wrt the Marcott data: The Marcott data, after all their manipulations, shows a certain variability and a certain uncertainty . This variability reflects both the actual variability of temps from year-to-year, inaccuracies in time/temp response and imprecision in temp responses ,and introduced errors due to modification of time-temp signals due to preservation problems. But modern data allows us to determine what part of recent data is natural variability, and what part is instrumentation and measurement. Could we work backwards from a position of modern knowledge to estimate the actual variability of Marcott’s time ASSUMING the same response existed going back in time? In other words, with the amount of variability that Marcott says is “real”, can we predict, based on the post 1880 instrumental data, what the probable short-term variability would be to get that? Personally, I think that Marcott got an interesting result that may be impossible to quantify (outside of the Sausage). But if he/they want to say it IS quantifiable and therefore can be compared to modern temperatures, then perhaps we need to back-engineer a probable (their definition of certainty) short-term variability that “can” be compared to near-today. 124. Doug Proctor says: Hi, Roger, I’m putting this here and not on the blog wrt Pinker et al in case I am completely off base. I’ve been there before. If my simplistic math looks okay to you, then you can copy it to the blog. I dunno. We figure what we can if we no longer feel we can count on the “experts” to tell us what we think they are telling us. It has become a messy world. Okay, here goes with how I see it, rightly or wrongly: Principles: 1. All energy comes from the Sun and on only one side of the planet. 2. Whatever is not reemitted by the sunlighted side must be reemitted by the dark side to maintain stable temperatures. Whatever happens, the world warms as a function of how the darkside manages reradiative release. 3. The world can warm either by a) increasing TSI overall (brighter sun) while maintaining prior absolute or proportional levels of reflection, refraction and reemissions, or b) maintaining a stable TSI, but increasing the amount of SI absorbed by the atmosphere and ground (less daytime clouds) or c) maintaining a stable TSI and daytime cloud cover but increasing the amount of SI absorbed by the atmosphere and ground (GHGs, aerosols and albedo effects). Still, temperatures will rise on Earth only if the nightside does not reemit at a rate equal to the increased absorption rate on the sunlit side. At the same time, the world can also warm by 4) maintaining a stable TSI, a stable cloud cover during the daytime, a stable atmospheric content and overall albedo, but decreasing the amount that is reemitted on the darkside (increased low level clouds). Again, no matter how you warm the planet, during the warming phase there is less energy being emitted on the night side than there has been retained by sundown on the sunlit side. As I read Pinker et al, they are picking up an increase of ground measured SI between 1983 and 2001 of 0.16 w/m2-yr (planetary average), or 2.88 W/m2. (This assumes measurements were with cloud cover as occurred (???) otherwise, the number impacting the lower atmosphere and ground has to be decreased by cloud cover % X reflectivity of clouds) On that basis, : 1. Since 1983 to 2001, the SI at ground level has increased 2.88 W/m2. With an (clear) air absorption number of 0.20 (from somewhere, debatable and re-insertable; let’s leave this as is for the purpose of this discussion), an increase of ground SI of 2.88 W/m2 means an increase of TOA TSI of 3.6 W/m2. The clear air absorption is then 0.72 W/m2. The warming component is then 2.0 X albedo + increased atmospheric absorption from TOA to ground. If the albedo has been constant (0.293!!) then the amount heating the planet since 1983 is 2.04 + 0.72 = 2.76 W/2. Since the SI only comes in on one side of the planet at a time, the SI increase is actually twice or 5.52W/m2. This then tells us about what to look for on the night side. In a temperature neutral world, the nightside loss would have increased between approximately 5.5 W/m2 since 1983 (to keep the temperature at the 1983 level). However, we know this would not initially happen (if we didn’t have a heat loss rate slightly less than heat retention rate, nighttime vs daytime, our daily surface temp variations would be the same as the Moon). But this WOULD occur once a new thermal stability were reached. So, once the warming phase stopped, nighttime emissions would have increased 5.5 W/m2 (albeit with a higher temperature). Based on the Pinter et al article, I would expect to see an increase in nightside emissions, towards but less than 5.5 W/m2. The difference is the net heating amount. Now consider a CO2-only warming world: In a CO2-only warming world, the TSI is fixed. In order for temperatures to go up, however, what goes out still has to be less than what comes in. Nighttime emissions in a CO2 warming world have to decrease from what they were before the CO2 warming started. It is the energy introduced during the day that is retained through the night until morning that warms the planet. The CO2-induced warming, however, is still the difference between in-coming in and out-going energy as before. As temperatures rise the emissions will increase, of course, but there will always be a difference between what was going out and what is going out (until the new stability is reached). 125. ulrich steiner says: tb, today’s German Magazine spiegel-online has a report on gamma radiation resulting from lightning, and are being directed outwards. They talk of “the most energy rich” radiation. Find it here (in German) http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/dunkle-blitze-aus-gammastrahlung-senden-strahlung-in-flugzeuge-a-893617.html Not much of scientific details. I don’t think I have ever heard about such radiation of such origin. But -assuming it is true – I am wondering how much energy is being radiated away from such gamma-lightning? Or whatever radiation results from lightning? [Reply] I have forwarded this to Pierre Gosselin for translation, thanks. 126. A C Osborn says: Roger, any chance that you could get Booker or Delingpole, Philip Eden or even the guy in the Daily mail? http://notrickszone.com/2013/04/11/russian-academy-of-sciences-experts-warn-of-imminent-cold-period-global-warming-is-a-marketing-trick/ 127. A C Osborn says: This is quite interesting on Joe Postma’s forum. http://climateofsophistry.com/2013/03/31/perendev-style-magnetic-motor-free-energy-generator/ 128. A C Osborn says: Forget my second post I see you have already been there. 129. Tenuc says: Good find, Oldbrew. An English article published by the register on 11 April available here… http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/11/gamma_ray_bursts_on_planes/ 130. Roy Martin says: I have mentioned a couple of times about more work on the possible influence of solar tides on the Sun. It is still a work-in-progress, but with a paper like the recent one by Callebaut and de Jager in circulation, it is timely to put out something to the contrary. I hope this version is ‘ready to fly’. Link to a pdf version: http://www.climatestop.com/The_Solar_Cycle_Clock_01.pdf Will upload odt copy and links to figures tomorrow. 131. tchannon says: “Discovery notes that the National Science Foundation is working on an armoured plane to fly through thunderstorms, which could carry instruments to get an accurate fix on gamma radiation released by dark lightning. ®” Are you sure there isn’t some April fool around? Armoured? The use of that work points to dorks and twirps. 132. A C Osborn says: Roger, Gabriel of Climate Realists has announced that he has suspended his Forum due to personal reasons. [Reply] There is a family bereavement. Our thoughts and best wishes go out to Gabriel at this difficult time. 133. […] converted to WordPress markup by co-moderator from material supplied by Roy […] 134. oldbrew says: ‘A paper published in the journal of the Italian Astronomical Society finds that solar geomagnetic activity was highly correlated to global temperature changes over the period from 1856-2000’ http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/paper-finds-solar-influence-on-climate.html 135. Gray says: The winter that wouldn’t end… Both retailers and small businesses say the exceptionally cold weather in March damaged business activity. The British Retail Consortium (BRC) said the number of people visiting shops last month was 5.2% lower than a year ago. Meanwhile, the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) said the March freeze cost the UK’s small businesses £174m. It said more than half of small firms admitted that cold weather damaged demand and closed businesses. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22121894 136. oldbrew says: Hydrogen on the cheap or just another pipe dream? ‘Scientists have harnessed the principles of photosynthesis to develop a new way of producing hydrogen – in a breakthrough that offers a possible solution to global energy problems.’ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/science-moves-step-closer-to-developing-hydrogen-as-cheap-and-clean-energy-form-8572525.html 137. J Martin says: Is it my imagination or does the sun have a tendency to alternate between producing sunspots on the Southern hemisphere and the Northern hemisphere. 138. oldbrew says: @ J Martin See here – under ‘Sunspots and Magnetic Fields’ near the top: http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/sun/magnetic.html Harry Huffmann gives the figures showing why so-called CO2 climate sensitivity is a dud. ‘CO2 Climate Sensitivity Vs. Reality’ http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/co2-climate-sensitivity-vs-reality.html 139. Brian H says: http://phys.org/news/2013-04-simulation-sun-heartbeat-magnetic.html Magnetic simulation of solar events and cycles. 140. oldbrew says: “there is no evidence that there are changes in the [1] strength, [2] frequency, [3]duration, [4] location or [5] direction of propagation of El Niño and La Niña anomalies caused by global warming during the period from 1871 to 2008” http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2013/apr/17apr2013a1.html 141. If it wasn’t so serious it would be laughable: “This error is needed to get the results they published, and it would go a long way to explaining why it has been impossible for others to replicate these results. If this error turns out to be an actual mistake Reinhart-Rogoff made, well, all I can hope is that future historians note that one of the core empirical points providing the intellectual foundation for the global move to austerity in the early 2010s was based on someone accidentally not updating a row formula in Excel.” http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rortybomb/researchers-finally-replicated-reinhart-rogoff-and-there-are-serious-problems 142. Ian W says: Interesting article on German energy policy With Germany the only Western European nation still intent on building a large amount of additional coal generation capacity (10GW according to some reports), this marks a remarkable policy failure for European environmentalism. http://www.marklynas.org/2013/01/germanys-energiewende-the-story-so-far/ 143. oldbrew says: A new study says ‘Superstorm’ Sandy rattled the ocean floor. ‘Seismic tracking of storms might allow observations that satellites can miss.’ The Sandy study ‘is exploratory science where we are trying to learn fundamental things about how the atmosphere, oceans and solid Earth interact.’ http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130418213919.htm 144. A C Osborn says: Roger, you may be interested in this Solar Planet Harmonics correlation paper http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/analysis-finds-planetary-harmonics.html [co-mod: The original Italian post will be of considerable interest to a number of regulars here. A bit awkward via the increasingly in-your-face-promotion Google translate. Make an item here? See what Rog reckons. –Tim] 145. A C Osborn says: Roger, this one should interest you, the Met Office backs down. http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/met-office-now-admits-arctic-sea-ice.html 146. tallbloke says: ACO: We posted it two days ago. 147. J Martin says: As posted by AC Osborn above, http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/analysis-finds-planetary-harmonics.html Looks very similar to this by Tim Channon and Tallbloke, though with several much longer frequencies, a comparison of the two would be interesting, it would also be interesting to see the Italian one extended back to the 1600s and both extended forward to 2100 at least. https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/tallbloke-and-tim-channon-a-cycles-analysis-approach-to-predicting-solar-activity/ 148. J Martin says: If I interpret Google translate correctly they are projecting reduced solar activity until 2100 with an increase from 2100 to 2160, and talk of a repeat of the little ice age between 2450 and 2650. Reading between the lines therefore, they are not expecting a Maunder repeat between now and 2100, but what they don’t say and don’t show is quite where that curve will go between now and 2100. But as they have published the frequencies used to plot the graph then someone with the necessary skill set could make up for this omission. It would be nice to see both graphs extended to 2100 and would certainly make for an interesting comparison. 149. tchannon says: Not that simple JM. Such a work involve three factors, two are missing, phase and amplitude. On taking a second look at what they are talking about I think they are generalising to spectral ranges. Locally within known data this is fair enough since it is conceptual but it is not literal. Looks similar to Landscheidt’s “hand” ideas. To me it look more like modulation patterns. 150. Scute says: If anyone wants specific tracts of the Italian translated by a human, now or in the future, I can do that. However, I read a large part of the Google translation for this paper and it is stunningly good. I could see a few tiny faults, guessing what the original was trying to say but it was very good overall. 151. A C Osborn says: RE tallbloke says: April 22, 2013 at 8:52 pm ACO: We posted it two days ago. Roger, the report quoted by the Hockey Schtick is basically the same as the one you posted. But it is a PDF by Julia Slingo which has added a section to the original report you posted that compares March 2013 with March 1962 plus a lot more data than in the original. Plus the Concluding Remarks has additional information as well. 152. tallbloke says: Thanks, didn’t spot that. 153. Gray says: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22271972 The earliest satellite maps of Arctic and Antarctic sea-ice have been assembled by scientists. They were made using data from Nasa’s Nimbus-1 spacecraft, which was launched in 1964 to test new technologies for imaging weather systems from orbit. The satellite’s old pictures have now been re-analysed to determine the extent of the marine ice at the poles in the September of that year. Regular mapping from space did not begin until 1978. One key finding is that marine floes around the White Continent in the 1960s were probably just as extensive as they are today. 154. oldbrew says: Wind turbine blaze in Canada. ‘Are turbines more dangerous than logging equipment?’ http://www.fireengineering.com/news/2013/04/23/4-million-turbine-fire-at-kibby-mountain-puts-wind-energy-under-new-scrutiny-by-state-opponents.html ‘In a financial report released last May, Vestas admitted that it had identified 376 gearboxes within V90-3.0 MW turbines that were “delivered to Vestas from June 2009 to September 2011” that “may potentially need additional maintenance, repair or replacement due to malfunctioning bearings.” ‘ How long is the guarantee period… 155. tallbloke says: Lord B: From that report: “Success with shale gas will reduce dependence on imports and increase tax revenues, they say, but there is a downside: if it takes off, shale gas will shatter the UK’s statutory climate change targets unless the government moves much faster with carbon capture and storage technology.” There is a provision in the climate change act to change the target if the science changes, which it has. CCS is a ludicrous proposal designed to enrichen a small number of entrepreneurs at the taxpayers (considerable) expense. 156. TB And yet the American CO2 emissions have been falling with the introduction of shale faster than the UK’s who have targets set in law. I’m all for less nanny state without even being worried about CO2. 157. J Martin says: I was wondering about all those graphs that Vuk produces to do with magnetic fields and temperatures and what mechanism may lay behind it. And then I wondered about all that water in the atmosphere and what keeps it floating up there. So perhaps a reducing global magnetic field leads to less moisture (ie greenhouse effect) in the atmosphere which leads to more cooling. Whilst at the same time more of the moisture that is left gets turned into clouds courtesy of the Svensmark effect, resulting in still more cooling. Meanwhile, a reducing magnetic field on the Sun also amplifies the Svensmark effect and reduces TSI and especially UV, reducing the height of the atmosphere and again leading to further cooling. And then there is the question, what can cause the magnetic field of both the Earth and the Sun to decline at the same time. 158. oldbrew says: More about the Van Allen probes study. Quote: ‘Yes, Virginia, the Earth has a magnetosphere—which is like a giant magnet with lines of force surrounding our planet’…. http://now.dartmouth.edu/2013/04/dartmouth-space-physicists-explore-earths-radiation-belts/ Nice graphic here for quick reference. 159. Scute says: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/whycassini/cassini20130429.html Permanent hurricane at Saturn’s N Pole. Cassini had imaged it in infrared but only now are the first visible light pictures coming in because the Pole was in darkness. NASA say it could be used to research for clues to hurricane behaviour on Earth. That’s the main reason I put it here. Other than that, there are some cool pics. 160. oldbrew says: @ Scute Your link says: ‘The hurricane swirls inside a large, mysterious, six-sided weather pattern known as the hexagon.’ From Wikipedia: ‘The straight sides of the northern polar hexagon are each approximately 13,800 km (8,600 mi) long, making them larger than the diameter of the Earth.[50] The entire structure rotates with a period of 10h 39m 24s (the same period as that of the planet’s radio emissions) which is assumed to be equal to the period of rotation of Saturn’s interior.[51] The hexagonal feature does not shift in longitude like the other clouds in the visible atmosphere.’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn#North_pole_hexagonal_cloud_pattern Is there really such a thing as a hurricane that ‘does not shift’? 161. ozzieostrich says: Tallbloke, When anybody brings up Graeff and/or gravity induced atmosphere warming, and starts on “thought experiments”, check to see whether the first law of thermodynamics is accepted. Proponents invariably start off with particles that are above absolute zero, and possess either kinetic or potential energy or both, without stating the source of such energy. Gravity can do no work without movement. At absolute zero, particles without energy are by definition touching each other in the smallest possible volume. If the proponent states that his particles start off separated from each other, and convert heir potential energy to kinetic energy as the force of gravity operates between the particles, and so on, then energy has been supplied to the system. If eventually the supplied energy is noted as heat, this cannot exceed the energy used to separate the particles (whatever their nature). So, starting with zero energy, gravity provides no additional energy. If you say, “Ah yes, but I am going to use the gravity of the Earth”, all I ask that you start with the Earth at absolute zero, so you are not accidentally adding extra energy which later appears as being due to gravity. Likewise, Graeff’s “experiments” are meaningless. Loschmidt was a very clever guy. He apparently didn’t realise that all matter above 0K is continuously emitting EMR. All. No exceptions. If you supply enough energy to a sample of gas at 0K to change its state to gas, rather than a solid, and fill a cylinder with it top to bottom, the application of gravity sufficient to cause more particles to accumulate at the bottom of the cylinder can be undertaken. The temperature at the bottom will rise. The particles at the bottom will radiate their energy away, until eventually the whole apparatus reduces its temperature reaches 0K or close to it, depending on the size of your infinite empty universe. Of course, such a situation cannot be realised in practice. However, gravity can provide no additional energy to the cylinder. It can give the appearance of doing so, to the naive or gullible observer. However, your cylinder and its contents will soon enough reach ambient temperature, regardless of gravity, or the lack thereof. Graeff believes he can tap into a source of free energy, produced by gravity. I wish him well, but I am prepared to bet that he will fail. Just a few random thoughts – accept or reject as you wish. Live well and prosper Mike Flynn [Reply] Mike: The Solar system started off hot, and got hotter. I don’t think there is any ‘free energy’ to be had, but energy that is already there, in one form, can be converted to another form which is more apparent to us, over a delimited timespan. 162. wayne says: “This feed contains errors. Internet Explorer will try updating this feed again later.” Rog, just a note. Your comment RSS has ceased to operate again. Ian Wilson just used a strange stream of characters and it seems a bad character was the cause before, maybe start looking there. 😉 163. oldbrew says: Using data from NASA’s Cassini probe: ‘A University of Iowa undergraduate student has discovered that a process occurring in Saturn’s magnetosphere is linked to the planet’s seasons and changes with them, a finding that helps clarify the length of a Saturn day and could alter our understanding of Earth’s magnetosphere.’ http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130503094951.htm 164. Craig M says: Good grief… “With predicted changes to climate in the UK, characterised by warming and wetter summers providing perfect breeding grounds for a number of pest-borne diseases, we need to consider some robust public health measures to minimise the potential outbreaks,” said Julie Barratt, director of the CIEH. http://guardian.co.uk/science/2013/may/05/uk-tropical-disease-malaria-threat 165. J Martin says: Diagrams of the dance of the Sun about the barycentre seem difficult to interpret. But I wonder if a diagram of the acceleration of the dance of the Sun around the barycentre might prove revealing. 166. A C Osborn says: Roger, Roy Spencer is at it again over Greenhouse Effects using a Camera and an FLIR i7 Thermal Imager this time. http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/05/imaging-the-greenhouse-effect-with-a-flir-i7-thermal-imager/ 167. Ian W says: I had always thought that someone would have looked at the 4 dimensional track of the barycenter through and around the Sun and linked that to the position and number of sunspots and to CMEs etc. But those with the wherewithal to do the modeling don’t believe in the barycenter or solar orbit of it and just in the chant of ‘free fall’ and the Sun (unlike other stars with planets) apparently does not wobble or alter its rotation. 168. oldbrew says: @ AC Osborn As Roy Spencer does not mention the thermal capacity of the oceans which cover over 70% of the earth’s surface, what is the value of his observations? 169. oldbrew says: Even the Germans are scratching their heads over the non-warming world climate numbers. http://notrickszone.com/2013/05/05/baffled-german-government-concedes-global-warming-has-stopped-warming-pause-is-remarkable-unexpected/ Notrickszone says: ‘Five more years and all their arguments will disappear. And in ten years the climate scientists are going to be left standing there looking like total asses – because it’s not going to get warmer for another 30 years. The PDO, AMO and sun are all now beginning their cold phases simultaneously. One only needs to look at the past winters to see the first indications. If one major volcano blows then we are very likely back to the Little Ice Age conditions of the 17th century.’ 170. “Jim Hansen postpones the day of doom But first he gives us a pleasant little surprise. He confirms something that I have been repeating for some years now: That the high surface temperature on Venus is not the result of runaway global warming but rather a simple adiabatic effect of the weight of the huge Venusian atmosphere. Hansen writes: “Venus today has a surface pressure of about 90 bars, compared with 1 bar on Earth. The Venus atmosphere is mostly CO2. The huge atmospheric depth and CO2 amount are the reason Venus has a surface temperature of nearly 500 degrees C.” But Hansen has invented a “get out of jail free” card for terrestrial warming called “Climate system inertia”. Now that past climate prophecies have been falsified by the temperature standstill of the last 17 years, there is an urgent need for Warmists to regroup. And Hansen has done that by moving the goalposts. He says that the climate is so slow to respond to input changes that it will takes centuries for the prophesied warming to occur. That of course make his prophecies effectively unfalsifiable.” http://antigreen.blogspot.com.au/ 171. Ian W says: @Lord Beaverbrook ” He says that the climate is so slow to respond to input changes that it will takes centuries for the prophesied warming to occur. That of course make his prophecies effectively unfalsifiable.” and falsifies them at the same time. If it takes centuries – then what happened in the pre-industrial era to cause the warming in 1980-1997? 172. tchannon says: Ask Hansen about Jupiter, no CO2. He knows that. 173. Tenuc says: Another one leaves the good ship SS CAGW before is slips gently under the waves, as our slumbering sun shows who’s the real boss regarding Earth climate. Prof Ivar Giaever, a physics Nobel laureate, has quit the American Physical Society in protest at its assertion that the evidence of damaging global warming is “incontrovertible”. Link to Telegraph article here… War of words over global warming as Nobel laureate resigns in protest http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8786565/War-of-words-over-global-warming-as-Nobel-laureate-resigns-in-protest.html 174. oldbrew says: New paper on climate oscillations reports : ‘The dominant cycle appears to be about 250 years. There is also a cycle of about 60 years, corresponding to the Atlantic/Pacific decadal oscillation.’ http://joannenova.com.au/2013/05/fourier-analysis-reveals-six-natural-cycles-no-man-made-effect-predicts-cooling/ 175. J Martin says: A quantum computer tests at 3600 times faster than a PC. I reckon Tim Channon might find one of those useful. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23519-commercial-quantum-computer-leaves-pc-in-the-dust.html 176. tchannon says: Grin. There are alternatives to conventional methods an old one being an analogue computer, very rare today. Speed is one of the reasons. Digital is precise but limited in some cases so what can seem trivial… just move the pin from here to there, it’s obvious, is beyond normal computing in a sensible time. KInd of an example, toss this ball bearing onto that surface, it rolls around and stops. Now you write the software and compute what just happened for all of1 in 10 seconds.

Or the infamous travelling salesman problem, any problem following a power law, bigger and faster hits limits. However, do you want a good answer or the perfect answer?

Why we can never model the earth…

177. Read and view comments

178. […] Food for thought from Michele, comment on Suggestions. […]

179. oldbrew says:

Welcome to the EU green hell.

‘According to Austria’s energy regulator, European consumers have subsidized renewable energy investors by a staggering 600 billion euros since 2004. Germany’s green transition alone may cost energy consumers up to a trillion euros by 2020.’

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/05/13/the-eu-green-hell/

180. Doug Proctor says:

From Delingpole today:

“But now Nigel Farage has gone and blown that argument out of the water with his ingenious scheme to give the Ukip badge of approval to certain Conservative candidates at the general election. Nadine Dorries is keen to be one of the first, she tells this week’s Spectator.”

Hah! Just what I suggested might happen, from the Canadian Reform Party experience. Make the Conservatives UKip-like, then replace from within. In Canada there was an actual merger of Reform and Conservative, becoming …. wait for it …. the Conservative Party. Perhaps the UKip could do it without having the costs of merging … and without having to have an actual UKip leader embarrassing the status quo-ers by the UKip becoming a majority.

181. alysdexia says:

Why can’t I leave a comment on the Nikolov-Skywalker posts?
[co-moderator: a cutoff based on the age of articles is enabled, a decision made to do with the sheer size of this site (1000+ articles), behaviour of a few contributors, and other practical factors. Keep in mind we have to try and manage this lot. The matter is active, not necessarily permanent, other changes might be introduced such as way to add very late comments to old articles.
A substantial comment which really adds content might be facilitated, including eg. a followup article if anyone wants to provide useful content. There is no bad intent. –Tim]

182. tallbloke says:

Comments are closed on older posts due to spam issues. Post your comments here for now.

183. Scute says:

TB/Tim

How long before the Chelyabinsk meteor page is closed for comments? Frank and I would need advance warning.

Incidentally, I appreciate your splitting of our comments into old and new- saves a lot of scrolling.

Andrew

184. tallbloke says:

Dont worry, active threads will be rolled forward in time.

185. Andrew Montford on the Today program this morning, must listen, BBC backtracking with much but,but,but….. should be on iplayer soon.

186. Additional Hansen interview, added to later airings:
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/5/17/hansens-scandalous-interview.html

187. richardcfromnz says:

FYI Roger

realityrulesok says:
May 18, 2013 at 10:29 pm

Well put, Thomas.

Note that RC’s reply below quotes Tallbloke, a brain-damaged motorcyclist with no scientific credentials, plus a paper from 1996.

All in all, just the usual Cummings melange of cherry-picking, fake quotes and outdated irrelevancies. Still, I guess it keeps him off the streets harassing normal folk.

http://www.climateconversation.wordshine.co.nz/2013/05/renwick-blames-drought-on-man-made-global-warming/#comment-199806

Richard C (NZ) says:
May 19, 2013 at 12:30 am

>”Note that RC’s reply below quotes Tallbloke, a brain-damaged motorcyclist with no scientific credentials”

Completely inept comprehension (but actually willful miss-attribution) as usual [Rob] Taylor. Tallbloke (actually a qualified scientific historian AFAIA) could run rings around you effortlessly now that he’s recovered from his accident. Would you like me to invite him to respond to you directly? I’ve left a note of your comment in his ‘Suggestions’ anyway. Perhaps he’ll do a blog post in your honour.

Tallblokes website is simply the host of Professor John Eggert’s graph.

>”..plus a paper from 1996″

On which industrial combustion engineering is still based the world over – should all such facilities now adopt the IPCC’s curve instead for furnace design at your behest?

[co-mod: I have seen this. Tallbloke is currently away on business. –Tim]

188. craigm350 says:

For Vuk but related to this thread re: Kamchatka>>

https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/04/20/met-office-flapping-on-winter-201213-but-mention-ssw/

Tolbachik

Total amount of ejecta is about one fifth of the VEI-6 eruption of Pinatubo, one ninth of Lakí and a whopping twenty times more material ejected then during Eyjafjallajökull….One thing that I started thinking is that Tolbachik is about as gassy as its Icelandic counterparts. The likely hood is that the gas has affected the weather inside the temperate zone weather cell across the globe.

http://volcanocafe.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/there-be-eruptions/

Looking to be quite a significant ongoing eruption which has flown under the radar despite being in the Northern Hemisphere. Some movement in the region the past week:

Some fair volcanic activity the past week covered, and good discussion in the comments from the linked article.

189. oldbrew says:

German brewers are saying gas fracking could ruin their beer.

http://rt.com/news/beer-fracking-merkel-environment-710/

190. Doug Proctor says:

Fellows,

Willis just showed how smoothing of temperature data moves volcanic cooling to pre-volcanic events. I wonder: is this why Antarctic and Greenland ice core data show temperature changes start BEFORE CO2 changes?

I’ve seen repeats of studies that claim the connection is closer, but it comes from fudges. So the disconnect still lives. But I suspect that the database for temperatures and CO2 from ice core are not the same statistically. Smoothing – if not the actual algorithms used to analyse trends and remove outlier data – may affect temperatures differently from CO2,

I haven’t see this discussed, but I haven’t seen Willis’ observation discussed before (though even I noted it, but didn’t thought it was a function of time-uncertainty in the temp-data).

191. Ian W says:

Willis just showed how smoothing of temperature data moves volcanic cooling to pre-volcanic events. I wonder: is this why Antarctic and Greenland ice core data show temperature changes start BEFORE CO2 changes?

800 – 1000 years is the amount temperature change precedes CO2. Is the smoothing in the ice cores in the region of 2000 years?

192. Doug Proctor says:

The smoothing in data seems to be asked only after the compilation is questioned: the spaghetti graphs that arrived after Mann was questioned, remember, showed that what we thought (were shown) as a simple trend was, in fact, a mess with a huge variability that disappeared after statistical fiddling. (Or appeared to disappear for promotional purposes) I don’t know anymore about the ice core data, or the CO2 data.

Recently I saw the raw data from Mauna Loa, the CO2 as actually measured. The article was on how CO2 from nearby eruptions was removed. Wow! The raw data has huge variations OUTSIDE of the volcanic emanations. There are daily and seasonal changes that have been removed. Considering what I saw of obvious multi-year variations in local flora (due, largely, to rainfall changes), I wondered if there had been other “adjustments”, including that of plankton, that weren’t discussed. The difference between what was collected and what was shown was staggering, and it makes me wonder how originally “clean” the ice core data is.

CO2 measurements may be cheap. Oxygen isotope measurements, I wouldn’t think are cheap. But computational infill is cheap.

I’m not a computer man. I can barely put music from my laptop on my iPod (okay, I admit it, my son does it for me. I’d still be using a Walkman if I had a tape machine.) So understanding, let alone downloading and working with digital data from the icecaps (including Lonnies alpine data just released from her Peru work) is beyond me. And most others. What I can do is see holes and I can see where assumptions exist that may not be supportable. I can see disconnects and circular reasoning, all of which exist within the climate change establishment.

The fewer the data points, the larger effect smoothing will have. Mannian algorithms have the ability to take patterns found in one or two data sets and impose them on a grouped 18 without setting off alarm bells amongst the collaterative illuminati. Why simple grouping and eyeballing is considered unable to see patterns in such certain science is outside of my ken, but so is the iPod, so what do I know?

So, to answer: I have no idea what smoothing as per Willis will do. But here is a thought.

Willis’ work concerned data taken on a daily basis. There, the smoothing resulted in a knock-back of 18 months, or 540X the input time period. If we allow this sort of knockback, and we know that the time period of glacial ice is +/-70 years (until sufficiently impermeable, snow-ice “breathes” whith changes in atmospheric pressure, mixing atmospheric components), then it is possible that a knockback of 800 years could occur with a time-proportional data collection as per the temperature set.

Perhaps the question to be answered is this of statisticians: within any data set with a given variation, to what extent will smoothing of various types push back the original data at which the data began to diverge from its prior pattern?

193. […] Proctor, from Talkshop Suggestions where he is also responding to prior […]

194. tckev says:

This may interest you
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50425/abstract

Now there’s an interesting line or two from the abstract –

We have ignored all air temperature observations and instead inferred them from observations of barometric pressure, sea surface temperature, and sea-ice concentration using a physically-based data assimilation system called the 20th Century Reanalysis. This independent dataset reproduces both annual variations and centennial trends in the temperature datasets, demonstrating the robustness of previous conclusions regarding global warming.

Hey, lets all run-off and infer our data indirectly because all that temperature measurement error stuff plays hell with the theory.

195. oldbrew says:

The benefits of CO2.

‘a study of arid regions around the globe finds that a carbon dioxide “fertilization effect” has, indeed, caused a gradual greening from 1982 to 2010’

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130531105415.htm

196. Lord Beaverbrook says:

Get the champagne on ice:
http://www.utilityweek.co.uk/news/news_story.asp?id=198665&channel=0&title=Decc%3A+10%25+of+staff+could+go
‘Up to 10 per cent of the workforce at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) will come under threat during 2013/14, with around 200 staff expected to enter into consultation over their jobs, according to information obtained by Utility Week.’

197. Scute says:

I just got an RSS from NASA saying this (link below) is happening summer 2012. Intense study of how pollution is carried into the upper atmosphere by summer storms in the US. it’s a multi pronged approach with planes, satellites and 250 scientists

http://espo.nasa.gov/missions/seac4rs

198. J Martin says:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/10107478/MPs-want-to-turn-your-lights-off.-A-shame-no-one-told-you.html

Whilst the proposal to reduce each person or families and businesses electricity usage by 27% by 2020 didn’t make it into law, one does wonder how they could achieve such a thing. Certainly it would cripple industry and would force a dramatic reduction in living standards on the populace.

They could try to do it via price but that would hit the poorest hardest, they could try to ration, according to size of household but that would require smart meters. They could try to do it via legislating more efficient appliances, but the technology for that could not be invented and brought into use quickly enough. Perhaps if the government were to forcibly replace all light bulbs and television sets, confiscate all tumble dryers and air conditioning units.

With the exception of 8 worthy MPs the rest would appear to have less integrity and intellect than the rats in the sewers beneath the Houses of Parliament.

The climate change act is unachievable nonsense that will have no impact on either global or UK co2 levels and certainly no impact on temperatures.

One thing is certain, the climate change act will steadily drive industry abroad, unemployment will rise inexorably and the end result as it becomes clear that temperatures are entering a minimum will be riots.

199. Scute says:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22845425

BBC science and tech put this out today. The photo looks fishy to me. I’m pretty sure it is a smokestack but I’m wondering whether all that smoke billowing around it is actually steam from cooling towers.

WUWT did a piece recently on a pic of a bunch of chimneys that really looked as if they were belching out smoke, silhouetted against a sunset- and come to think of it, they were slender too, like smokestacks. Anyway, WUWT identified the power station and showed a daytime pic of billowing white steam emerging from them. The alarmists have been caught so many times using cooling towers as smokestacks that they now have to be inventive. I think this may be an example of that.

I checked the AP image catalogue (logo in corner of pic) but couldn’t find the pic. I wanted to see if it was cropped. Someone else might have more luck in getting to the bottom of this.

Scute

200. oldbrew says:

Chiefio sets the record straight about water vapour, from direct observations.

http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2013/06/09/the-true-sign-of-water-vapor-feedback-is-negative/

201. Doug Proctor says:

Roger,

I’ve copied this from a comment I made on today’s Tisdale WUWT post wrt IPCC models on hemispheric ice changes. He noted the disconnect between observation and modelled mean outcome, but also addressed the complaint that you “cannot” compare observation to one specific outcome, even if it is the “mean” outcome. I’ve struggled with this idea myself, but also came to understand why: like in an Angus-Reid poll where they say the results are +/- 6%, 19 out of 20 times, there is a poll that would be done, if all polls were done, that gave (1 in 20 times) a result that’s significantly different from the mean, and significantly different from the ordinary noise (the +/- 6% in this example). Though a legitimate retort, it avoids the most important question a questioning mind might ask: does the observation, regardless of what it is, tell us anything about the fundamentals we thought were present, or is the observation truly an aberration? And if an aberration, can we shift from the aberration position (for polls, change the opinions of those polled) to the expected position (at least the mean)?

The question I am asking is a fundamental one of IPCC predictability for the next half century. It is oone answered by statisticians as well as those familiar with how the algorithms of the IPCC work address unknown variables and unknown variability (noise)

Perhaps one of your technically knowledgeable could address this.

Below, I try to explain myself with reference to Tisdale’s hemispheric ice work

This might be a good time to address the following point:

When we look at an ensemble of outcomes, i.e. Scenarios, we see the variability dependent on specific situations that arise, the various situations representing either the noise or the potential variation in important parameters. The observations we receive represent one, specific situation, which involves both fundamental, unchanging aspects, i.e. radiative forcings of various kinds, and specific instances of the variables. What we see may not be the mean, though, but one of the recognized low potential Scenarios.

In other words, when we see the observations from 1979 to 2013 match the lowest IPCC Scenario, close to “C”, we see that observations come closer to the 5% chance, but that does not mean that the mean is incorrrect. What happened is 100% by occurrence, but was recognized as 5% by procedure. We could also have had the top 5%, i.e. Scenario A+, without the mean being incorrect. Each 5% would simply indicate that the variables, not the fundamentals, conspired to produce what they did. Again, the results do not invalidate the mean.

The question we must answer is, what caused the situational outcome as observed, the variables, incorrect fundamentals or a combination of both? Going forward, moreover, we need to understand the basis of the prior Scenarios: is there enough variability in noise and variables to take us from where we are in 2013 to the endpoint of Scenario A in 2100?

This is something I have spokien to a number of times: why do we continue to show the history from 1979 or so on the projections from the AR series from the same date? Should not the AR projections always restart at the end of the current observational data?

The only way forward I can see is that the Scenarios have the variability to go from the present 2013 to the endpoint of Scenario A or C in 2100. This must be the position of the climatologists with the IPCC. I don’t believe it is true, but it is the only way I see to justify Scenario A at this time: somehow we must be able, within the IPCC mathematics, to jump 3C in the next 87 years. As well, the melting of continental glaciers must be able to increase within the IPCC math to crank sea level rise to about 20 mm/yr towards the end of the century. If the variability of the IPCC processes of climate change do not have that ability – as the science is said to be much more deter inistic, much less probabilistic (which is why they can claim that CO2 is the primary driver of heating) that such a rapid end-result change indicates, then nobody can place observations on the AR4 or 5 Scenarios graph. Some of the Scenarios are simply impossible to occur by 2100.

Your opinion would be appreciated.

202. kuhnkat says:

Mathis finally more fully explains his Charge field being black body radiation:

http://milesmathis.com/bbody.pdf

Might make an interesting discussion.

203. tchannon says:

You trying to start WW3?
I’ve a wicked idea. What if we join Mathis and dragonslayers?
Not sure I want that right now. Need th thunk about what to do.

204. kuhnkat says:

I was thinking Galactic Death Star encounter!!

Depends on which Slayer(s).

205. oldbrew says:

Google cuts out satellites with Internet trials using balloons.

http://phys.org/news/2013-06-google-internet-beaming-balloons_1.html

206. Paul Vaughan says:

Tim, new data that will likely interest you –
– pointed out by Bill Illis here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/18/on-muller-et-al-2013-decadal-variations-in-the-global-atmospheric-land-temperatures/#comment-1340223
“North Atlantic SSTs […] going back to 1000 AD. Looks a little different than other AMO reconstructions we have seen but 10 different reliable-type proxies were used […]”
Looking forward to seeing something from you on this.

207. […] h/t Michele Casati on Suggestions […]

208. Bloke down the pub says:

Has this one over at GWPF been covered here?

http://www.thegwpf.org/perihelion-precession-polar-ice-global-warming/

209. […] Bloke down the pub reports his dog said the GWPF said Steel said, so I must be a mutt for believing. (I hope the Brit humour […]

210. oldbrew says:

Wanted: cloudspotters.

‘By using CloudSpotter, you will help scientists better understand and model climate change. We are excited that NASA will use the data gathered by CloudSpotters around the globe to calibrate their CERES cloud-observing satellite instruments.

The geo-tagged and verified cloud observations photographed by you and other CloudSpotters around the world will actively help research the crucial role that clouds play in global climate change.’

211. tchannon says:

For kids “Price £1.99″ It’s a come on for commercial promotion chargable.where the big one is cloud book promotion.

Sceptre,  338  Euston  Road,  London  NW1  3BH

And that leads on to ” Publicity Director. +44 (0)20 7873 6440 nikki.barrow @hodder.co.uk”
(not redacted is open web content)

Hodder & Stoughton are part of Hachette UK

http://www.hachette.co.uk/Articles/HUK%20Group%20Structure.page

Which is part of hachette livre
http://www.hachette.com/en/organisation-en.html

Hachette Livre, a subsidiary of the French media giant Lagardère

It then gets complicated on who really owns or controls.

So this is getting kids to geolocate themselves with images.

Various reasons why it is not a lot of practical use to CERES. Includes people don’t cover much of the globe and the really difficult area is nighttime.

212. Tenuc says:

tchannon says:
June 21, 2013 at 5:30 pm
“…It then gets complicated on who really owns or controls…”

I’ve heard it said that Jean-Luc Lagardère made his money out of arms dealing – bankrolled by the Rothschilds. Went on to found a multi-billion empire, though I expect the Rothschild family demanded and are receiving their pound of flesh. ‘Nuff said.

213. oldbrew says:

Peter Lilley attacks the IPCC and calls the global warming industry a cult.

‘What most clearly distinguishes the Catastrophic Global Warming cult from science is that it is not refutable by facts.’

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/peter-lilley/global-warming-religion_b_3463878.html

He’s the new chairman of the UK Energy and Climate Change committee.

214. oldbrew says:

@ mod

Sorry, posted this on the wrong thread, should be on Suggestions.
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/06/21/why-the-future-is-out-of-our-hands-be-scared/comment-page-1/#comment-54943

215. tchannon says:

It happens oldbrew.
Managed to sleep so hopefully I’ll be back in service later.

216. oldbrew says:

Another new post by Ian Wilson:

Are the Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) Warm Events driven by Lunar Tides?

http://astroclimateconnection.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/are-dansgaard-oeschger-d-o-warm-events.html

217. Scute says:

For Tim or anyone interested:

Today Monday 24th June 2013 in London. I swear it was the coldest June day I can remember. Everyone togged up like Eskimos and still grimacing and cursing. It warmed up a bit around 4pm but you might want to see if any records were broken here or around the UK?

218. tchannon says:

Heating came on for one cycle here middle of day.

There have been some awful Junes over the years, what if it was raining?

This town as I recall there were snow drifts several feet deep in the main street one June late 1800s. Err.. recall, umm… read it. Might dig it out sometime.

Quick look at stations, was chilly first thing ~10C and warmed slowly to 14C to 15C, late peak.

219. Scute says:

Thanks Tim

I went out in shorts. People were laughing at me. Knee caps froze solid.

220. Sparks says:

Flooding catastrophes at the Bavarian Lake Ammer occur predominantly during phases of weak solar activity.

By Fritz Vahrenholt and Sebastian Lüning
(Translated, edited by P Gosselin)

http://notrickszone.com/2013/06/24/data-show-amazing-relationship-between-south-german-flooding-frequency-and-solar-activity/

221. J Martin says:

Panic over, all the CAGW alarmists can now all have a good night’s sleep without waking up in a cold sweat over global warming. The cure ? Aldi now sell “climate control pillows”.

https://www.aldi.co.uk/en/specialbuys/sunday-specialbuys-30th-june/product-detail/ps/p/climate-control-pillows/

[ 🙂 -tim]

222. Roger Andrews says:

A new method for predicting El Niños?

http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.8039

223. tchannon says:

RA, what is Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber doing tacked on the end?
He is yet another who plays as though he has hands on.
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/6/1783.full
Any signs there of swamp experience? Seems to like Nobel mentions.

The open access paper includes this
“What happened in pre-modern times is unlikely to be repeated in the future. However, anthropogenic global warming [11-12] may have a significant effect on the character of ENSO and render this geophysical pattern even more challenging for certain societies. In fact, the phenomenon is listed among the so-called “tipping elements” in the Earth System [13-14] that might be transformed – sooner or later – by the greenhouse-gas emissions from fossil-fuel
burning and land-cover change. The scientific jury is still out, pondering the question how El Niño-events will behave in a world without aggressive climate-protection measures [15]. Will the eastern tropical Pacific warm permanently, periodically, or as irregularly as nowadays? Will the oscillation go away completely (something that appears rather unlikely according to Ref. 4) or gain in strength (as suggested by some paleo-climatic data)? In the latter case, anything that helps to improve the predictive power of the scientific ENSO analysis would be even more important than it is already today.”

That has no business in a scientific paper.

224. oldbrew says:

Have a plasma donut…

‘By analysing data from the European Space Agency’s Cluster spacecraft, researcher Iannis Dandouras detected this plasmaspheric wind, so-called because it contributes to the loss of material from the plasmasphere, a donut-shaped region extending above Earth’s atmosphere.’

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130702100106.htm

225. tchannon says:

Surprising finding oldbrew., I think, doesn’t quite click with me on comprehension.

226. Doug Proctor says:

Roger,

The WUWT thing with Willis: now I understand the Tallbloke’s problem with WE – you either previously dated his girlfirend, and he does not well stand the comparison, or he is still pissed about George III and the taxes on tea.

The thing about the skeptics and blogs is that many are learning as they go, good intentions and excitement included. Skeptics also, as a fundamental, recognize the potential for error and the potential to be both corrrected and educated by others. Some, like WE, are of the Revealed Truth vairety, or as I have called it, sufferes of the Unique Solution Syndrome, in which The Solution has been revealed to them (possibly by God, or just through their own brilliance) and therefore all others must be wrong.

Having suffered at the dinnertable of such a one, I can tell you how any argument goes. There are three stages:

!. You do not undersstand because the explanation was possibly too complicated for your backkground or mental speed. The explanation is then repeated, using different analogies perhaps, in order that you understand. But you do not agree.

2. You do not understand because you are stupid. The explanation is given again, but this time the words are smaller, the images simpler and, if possible, it is said louder. Still you do not agree.

3. You are simply bloody-minded, perverse and determined to contradict because you refuse to admit the superiority of your opponent. You are now dismissed loudly, rudely and in public, if at all possible. No more heed need be paid to you, in fact it is a a public service to ridicule you so that your obstinate, personal attack on men and women of character and good-standing be known to all and your pernicious influence twarted.

Anger is a sign that power has been threatened in a way that cannot be otherwise rebuffed. In the ways of the world, it is a good sign you are doing something right (though it may be personally unprofitable).

On a different subject:

I fell for the residence time vs pulse recovery time. It stuck me that a graph of total CO2 emissions from 1850 to present as a cummulative vs ppm CO2, or a total CO2 emissions expressed as ppm “potential” vs actual ppm CO2 would show a difference that was reflective of the sequestering (permanently) in the lithosphere, biosphere and hydrosphere that would show the actual residence time of CO2 if the residence time of CO2 were, in fact, <<100 years.

I'm in Barcelona, where pensioners are protesting the calamatous loss of their pensions by the banks, but nobody seems to care a rats about CAGW or say that the warm weather is caused by globaal warming. Maybe that is because cute young woment in short skirts are not considered a catastrophic result of any warming, let alone a man-made one. But who really knows, ecept for the Sierra Club.

227. Sparks says:

Is The Massive Planet around Tau Boo influencing its activity cycle?
http://thetempestspark.wordpress.com/2013/07/05/is-the-massive-planet-around-tau-boo-influencing-its-activity-cycle/

228. oldbrew says:

£5000 on offer for ‘exposing environmental pseudoscience.’

The Matt Ridley prize.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-2013-matt-ridley-prize/

D’ya feel lucky – well do ya….?!

229. Gray says:

Powerful earthquakes thousands of kilometres away can trigger swarms of minor quakes near wastewater-injection wells like those used in oil and gas recovery, a new study concludes.

And these minor quakes can sometimes be followed months later by quakes big enough to destroy buildings.

The discovery, published in the journal Science by one of the world’s leading seismology labs, threatens to make hydraulic fracturing, or ‘fracking’, which involves injecting fluid deep underground, even more controversial.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/07/12/3801578.htm

230. fadingfool says:

CCC calling for evidence – I suggest we all assist. http://www.theccc.org.uk/call-for-evidence/

231. oldbrew says:

Testimony of Dr Roy Spencer at yesterday’s Senate hearings on climate change.

‘The level of warming in the most recent 15 year period is not significantly
different from zero, despite this being the period of greatest greenhouse gas
concentration. This is in stark contrast to claims that warming is
“accelerating”.’

http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=16e80c55-9ebf-42e4-852e-1f6e960b0902

232. tchannon says:

SUGGESTIONS PAGE IS CLOSED, PLEASE USE NEW PAGE, Suggestions 4