(Two days' worth)
This slipped by me in all the hoo-ha over climategate.
Himalayan glacial melt probably driven by aerosols, notably black carbon. The Asians themselves appear to be a major factor in causing the problems that were claimed to be a product of AGW. NMG - Natives melting glaciers.
From NASA (the unextremists). The following excerpted from;
The Dark Side of Carbon: Will Black Carbon Siphon Asia’s Drinking Water Away? Dec. 14
Briefing Materials" [...] new research, by NASA’s William Lau and collaborators, reinforces with detailed numerical analysis what earlier studies suggest: that soot and dust contribute as much (or more) to atmospheric warming in the Himalayas as greenhouse gases. This warming fuels the melting of glaciers and could threaten fresh water resources in a region that is home to more than a billion people.
Download presentation slides (PDF)
Video: Tiny air pollution particles commonly called soot, but also known as black carbon, are in the air and on the move throughout our planet. The Indo-Gangetic plain, one of the most fertile and densely populated areas on Earth, has become a hotspot for emissions of black carbon (shown in purple and white). Winds push thick clouds of black carbon and dust, which absorb heat from sunlight, toward the base of the Himalayas where they accumulate, rise, and drive a "heat pump" that affects the region's climate. Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
Watch movie (MOV)

Another of the alarmist clamours felled? Full tale here: New Study Turns Up the Heat on Soot's Role in Himalayan Warming, (with links to more info.). 

Not only but also Dec. 14:
Is Declining Groundwater Storage Threatening Food Security in the United States and around the Globe?: New Observations of Major Groundwater Changes in California’s Central Valley and Other Aquifer Systems
I can't remember how long ago I banged the drum on this topic. It is a major problem in Africa, especially the north.

Breakthroughs in Weather, Climate and Greenhouse Gases from AIRS on Aqua Dec. 15

 
Above - AIRS mid-tropospheric CO2 trend presented as reverse propaganda followed by the real item (from here).

Above - AIRS global CO2 concentrations, July 2009

Above - July 2004

Click the pic for larger.
The AIRS Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Standard Retrieval Product (AIRX2STC) consists of retrieved estimates of CO2, plus estimates of the errors associated with the retrieval.
In contrast to the rest of Level 2 products originally released, the CO2 Level2 products are at 90x90 km nominal horizontal resolution at nadir. AIRS CO2, Level 2, granules have been set as 6 minutes of data, 15 footprints cross track by 22 lines along track.
Note that this is exclusively climate-change oriented parameter, with variability on seasonal scales, and strong global annual growing trend. Thus, as seen in the figure, daily retrievals are relatively sparse and have little statistical significance until aggregated to e.g. monthly CO2 product, AIRX3C2M.


Halfway up a volcano on Mauna Loa, Hawaii -- and -- global over marine surface sites.
Above from here.

Regarding the Jet Propulsion Lab crew. Have they jumped on the CO2 alarm bandwagon? From the way the images are presented (colourwise) it sure seems that way. I imagine much of their funding is due to the hype. Would you behave more honestly in their shoes?
Human plus nature, ~2ppm p.a. Human emissions have been accelerating yet there is no acceleration evident in either the surface or the mid troposphere. Of the 2ppm, the human fraction at most can be a third.

The rocket scientist (here) doesn't take on board any BS from the incompetent propagandists at the IPCC or any other propaganda merchants.. The following is an example:
[...] RealClimate defense says,

See here for comments -

This is a bit of a ramble, the only constraint being that ozone be part of the mix. I haven't categorized it yet and there is more to come so this is just a progress report basically. Any neutron involvement in cloud production is what I'm looking for just now. Any useful pointers would be appreciated.

"What if" from this article.Gamma Ray Bursts

Figure 31:

A nearby GRB would destroy our Ozone layer and create a smog of Nitrous Oxide. DNA is destroyed by the UV-B rays from the Sun. It can take several months for the Ozone to regenerate, but at a paltry 20%. Several years later, the nitrous oxide is rained out as acid rain. A few years after, the atmosphere returns to normal, but the Earth is now in a global cooling trend (Image Credit).

The Sun is a middle-aged star about 8 light-minutes from us. Its tantrums, though cosmically pitiful compared to the magnetar explosion, routinely squish Earth's protective magnetic field and alter our atmosphere, lighting up the night sky with colorful lights called aurora.
Solar storms also alter the shape of Earth's ionosphere, a region of the atmosphere 50 miles (80 kilometers) up where gas is so thin that electrons can be stripped from atoms and molecules -- they are ionized -- and roam free for short periods. Fluctuations in solar radiation cause the ionosphere to expand and contract.
"The gamma rays hit the ionosphere and created more ionization, briefly expanding the ionosphere," said Neil Gehrels, lead scientist for NASA's gamma-ray watching Swift observatory.
Gehrels said in an email interview that the effect was similar to a solar-induced disruption but that the effect was "much smaller than a big solar flare."
Still, scientists were surprised that a magnetar so far away could alter the ionosphere.
"That it can reach out and tap us on the shoulder like this, reminds us that we really are linked to the cosmos," said Phil Wilkinson of IPS Australia, that country's space weather service.
"This is a once-in-a-lifetime event," said Rob Fender of Southampton University in the UK. "We have observed an object only 20 kilometers across [12 miles], on the other side of our galaxy, releasing more energy in a tenth of a second than the Sun emits in 100,000 years."

Ozone Depletion from Nearby Supernovae [...] In separate simulations we calculate the ozone depletion due to both gamma rays and cosmic rays. We find that for the combined ozone depletion from these effects roughly to double the "biologically active" UV flux received at the surface of the Earth, the supernova must occur at < ~8 pc. Based on the latest data, the time-averaged Galactic rate of core-collapse supernovae occurring within 8 pc is ~1.5 Gyr-1.

Alarmist Wiki Gamma Rays and Bursts
Currently orbiting satellites detect an average of about one gamma-ray burst per day. Because gamma-ray bursts are visible to distances encompassing most of the observable universe, a volume encompassing many billions of galaxies, this suggests that gamma-ray bursts must be exceedingly rare events per galaxy. Measuring the exact rate is difficult, but for a galaxy of approximately the same size as the Milky Way, the expected rate (for long GRBs) is about one burst every 100,000 to 1,000,000 years.^[1] Only a few percent of these would be beamed towards Earth. Estimates of rates of short GRBs are even more uncertain because of the unknown beaming fraction, but are probably comparable.^[72] A gamma-ray burst in the Milky Way, if close enough to Earth and beamed towards it, could have significant effects on the biosphere. The absorption of radiation in the atmosphere would cause photodissociation of nitrogen, generating nitric oxide that would act as a catalyst to destroy ozone.^[73] According to a 2004 study, a GRB at a distance of about a kiloparsec could destroy up to half of Earth's ozone layer; the direct UV irradiation from the burst combined with additional solar UV radiation passing through the diminished ozone layer could then have potentially significant impacts on the food chain and potentially trigger a mass extinction.^[2][74] The authors estimate that one such burst is expected per billion years, and hypothesize that the Ordovician-Silurian extinction event could have been the result of such a burst.
[So we don't have so much to fear from gamma rays emitted by distant stars... do we?]

Milky Way black hole may be a colossal 'particle accelerator'
Scientists were startled when they discovered in 2004 that the center of our galaxy is emitting gamma rays with energies in the tens of trillions of electronvolts. Now astrophysicists at The University of Arizona, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of Adelaide (Australia) have discovered a mechanism that might produce these high-energy gamma rays. The black hole at the center of our Milky Way could be working like a cosmic particle accelerator, revving up protons that smash at incredible speeds into lower energy protons and creating high-energy gamma rays, they report.

High Energy Cosmic Rays and the Atmosphere
Cosmic rays are (mostly) protons from outer space. When a high-energy proton hits the earth's atmosphere, it will collide and interact with one of the nuclei of the atmospheric gas molecules.

Showers and muons
In these high-energy collisions many secondary particles are produced, including lots of high-energy particles called pions. Pions decay rapidly but some may first interact and make even more (somewhat lower energy) pions.
A high-energy (charged) pion decay makes a high-energy muon and two (unseen) neutrinos. Muons have two properties that allow them to reach the earth's surface:
   1. Muons decay relatively slowly compared to pions.
   2. Muons penetrate large amounts of material without interacting.
Muons, unlike pions, have no strong interaction properties and unlike electrons they are too massive to be significantly deflected by atomic electric fields that they encounter.
Cosmic ray shower
The illustration shows what happens. A proton from outer space (yellow) hits the upper atmosphere, and produces a shower of other particles (green). Some of these particles (mostly pions) decay into muons (red). Only a small fraction of the muons reaches the earth's surface, because most decay in flight. Therefore, at higher altitudes there are more muons, because fewer have decayed. At sea level, one muon goes through an area the size of your fingernail about every minute!

Galactic Cosmic Rays (high energy particles from galactic sources other than the Sun)
Alarmist Wiki Cosmic Rays
[...] Almost 90% of all the incoming cosmic ray particles are protons, almost 10% are helium nuclei (alpha particles), and slightly under 1% are heavier elements and electrons (beta minus particles).[ref] The term ray is a misnomer, as cosmic particles arrive individually, not in the form of a ray or beam of particles.
[...] The origins of these particles range from energetic processes on the Sun all the way to as yet unknown events in the farthest reaches of the visible universe. Cosmic rays can have energies of over 10²⁰ eV.
[...] Interaction with the Earth's atmosphere
When cosmic ray particles enter the Earth's atmosphere they collide with molecules, mainly oxygen and nitrogen, to produce a cascade of lighter particles, a so-called air shower. The general idea is shown in the figure which shows a cosmic ray shower produced by a high energy proton of cosmic ray origin striking an atmospheric molecule.

 

This image is a simplified picture of an air shower: in reality, the number of particles created in an air shower event can reach in the billions, depending on the energy and chemical environment (i.e. atmospheric) of the primary particle. All of the produced particles stay within about one degree of the primary particle's path. Typical particles produced in such collisions are charged mesons (e.g. positive and negative pions and kaons).

Cosmic rays are also responsible for the continuous production of a number of unstable isotopes in the Earth’s atmosphere, such as carbon-14, via the reaction:

Cosmic rays kept the level of carbon-14 in the atmosphere roughly constant (70 tons) for at least the past 100,000 years, until the beginning of aboveground nuclear weapons testing in the early 1950s. This is an important fact used in radiocarbon dating which is used in archaeology.

Reaction products of secondary cosmic ray, lifetime and reaction^[5]

• Tritium (12.3 a): 14N(n, 3H)12C (Spallation)
• Beryllium-7 (53.3 d)
• Beryllium-10 (1.6E6 a): 14N(n,p α)10Be (Spallation)
• Carbon-14 (5730 a): 14N(n, p)14C (Neutron activation)
• Sodium-22 (2.6 a)
• Sodium-24 (15 h)
• Magnesium-28 (20.9 h)
• Silicon-31 (2.6 h)
• Silicon-32 (101 a)
• Phosphorus-32 (14.3 d)
• Sulfur-35 (87.5 d)
• Sulfur-38 (2.8 h)
• Chlorine-34 m (32 min)
• Chlorine-36 (3E5 a)
• Chlorine-38 (37.2 min)
• Chlorine-39 (56 min)
• Argon-39 (269 a)
• Krypton-85 (10.7 a)

From a discussion More New Research further implicates Sun and Cosmic Rays that included Prof. Qing Bin Lu's Correlation between Cosmic Rays and Ozone Depletion (PDF here) (mentioned by CBC News in March, becoming popular amongst sceptical blogs in December). The paper was challenged by various parties, notably here, here and here.
I disagree with the CFC connection being significant. I have no problem with GCR protons colliding directly with ozone and with the various other molecules, creating different molecules that destroy or lead to ozone destruction. That CFCs are in Prof. Lu's frame as a primary factor is unrealistic imho not least because of the low and declining concentration. During SPEs that cause irregular ozone destruction, the situation may
Bunbury wrote:

Quote:

"Most remarkably, the total amount of CFCs, ozone-depleting molecules that are well-known greenhouse gases, has decreased around 2000," Lu said. "Correspondingly, the global surface temperature has also dropped. In striking contrast, the CO2 level has kept rising since 1850 and now is at its largest growth rate."

It's possible to cherry pick isolated points in time that would superficially support Lu's claim, but the global surface temperature trend is still in an upward direction.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33482750/ns/us_news-environment/

Quote:

Saying there's a downward trend since 1998 is not scientifically legitimate, said David Peterson, a retired Duke University statistics professor and one of those analyzing the numbers. Identifying a downward trend is a case of "people coming at the data with preconceived notions," said Peterson, author of the book "Why Did They Do That? An Introduction to Forensic Decision Analysis."

-----------------------------
cypress replied: I read the article carefully and also a fair quantity of discussion online about the study as well. It appears that the AP requested that statisticians study two and only two data sets to form the conclusions. You might be interested in knowing what to sets they are. Could you confirm that they are the GISS and the HAD/CRU data sets? It also appears that the study is not peer-reviewed
If so, I note that those two sets stand out uniquely as two that have persistently diverge from the other global compilations now by about 0.3C. In the seventies and eighties they were in alignment but now they are not. Interestingly, they are the only global compilation where the raw data is not available. Dr. Lu chose not to use either of those data sets. Perhaps it was because they cannot be independently confirmed. Analysis of the other sets which are independently verified, show temperatures declining from 2001-2003 and onward just as Dr. Lu indicates.
Perhaps you can offer an explanation for these differences. Does David Peterson explain why only the two data sets that show the highest post 2000 temperatures were analyzed? Does he apply is expertise to evaluate the nature of the deviation between GISS/HAD/CRU and other data sets? If not, do you suppose that might be one reason the study was not peer-reviewed?
Going back though to your primary purpose of posting this, is it your contention that Dr. Lu is mistaken and as you say global temperatures continue to rise even between 2002 and today? If so, what data set are you using to support your claim and how can you independently validate that it is correct in this timeframe?
Here is a discussion of global temperature compilations for comparison purposes.
Temperature compilations:
http://junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Warming_Look.html
Temperature Proxies
http://junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Warming_Proxies.html

If the Sun is so quiet, why is the Earth ringing?
Story in pics PDF here
(Also WUWT - NASA: Cosmic rays up 19% since last peak – new record high could lead to cooling)
<img src="http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/cosmic_ray_surge_graph.jpg" width="350" align="right">
A comparison of two solar minimum intervals
Discussed. The study, led by scientists at the High Altitude Observatory of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University of Michigan, finds that Earth was bombarded last year with high levels of solar energy at a time when the Sun was in an unusually quiet phase and sunspots had virtually disappeared.
"The Sun continues to surprise us," says NCAR scientist Sarah Gibson, the lead author. "The solar wind can hit Earth like a fire hose even when there are virtually no sunspots."

Alarmist Wiki Magnetosphere
Important because this is the first line of defence against SPEs and GCRs whose penetration of the lower atmosphere layers causes ozone destruction.

Solar Wind and the Geomagnetic Hole
Sunspot abundance and the decline of the solar EMF (and accompanying articles) may be seen at WUWT - here, here and here with several other relevant articles amongst the search results here.

Ships' logs give clues to Earth's magnetic decline

[...] Gubbins showed that the overall strength of the planet's magnetic field was virtually unchanged between 1590 and 1840. Since then, the field has declined at a rate of roughly 5% per 100 years.
Every 300,000 years on average, the north and south poles of the Earth's magnetic field swap places. The field must weaken and go to zero before it can reverse itself. The last such reversal occurred roughly 780,000 years ago, so we are long overdue for another magnetic flip. Once it begins, the process of reversing takes less than 5000 years, experts believe.

Alarmist Wiki Geomagnetic Reversal
[...] The present strong deterioration corresponds to a 10–15% decline over the last 150 years and has accelerated in the past several years; however, geomagnetic intensity has declined almost continuously from a maximum 35% above the modern value achieved approximately 2000 years ago. The rate of decrease and the current strength are within the normal range of variation, as shown by the record of past magnetic fields recorded in rocks.
[...] the solar wind may induce a sufficient magnetic field in the Earth's ionosphere to shield the surface from energetic particles even in the absence of the Earth's normal magnetic field.[ref]

It doesn't alter the conclusion that the weakening of the geomagnetic field is declining and the strength of the solar induction ain't much in comparison due to the decline in solar activity. The decline allows greater penetration of high energy protons that accelerate ozone depletion. More UV allowed into the lower atmosphere causes greater generation of surface ozone and warming of the ocean surface in the short term, in the longer term, if theories stand, greater cloud production will result from tropospheric molecule collisions during high energy proton incursion, (increasing the neutron population that causes other effects?)

Geomagnetic Forcing of Earth’s Cloud Cover During 2000-2008?
If we do a scatterplot of the data (below), we get an average linear relationship of about 0.05 W per sq. meter increase in reflected sunlight per 1 unit decrease in Ap index. This is at least qualitatively consistent with a decrease in solar activity corresponding to an increase in cloud cover. ...
But just how big is this linear relationship seen in the above scatterplot? From looking at a 70-year plot of Ap data (originally from David Archibald), we see that the 11-year sunspot cycle modulates the Ap index by at least 10 units. ...
When the 10 Ap unit variations are multiplied by the 0.05 scale factor, it suggests about a 0.5 W per sq. meter modulation of global reflected sunlight during the 11 year solar cycle (as well as in monthly and yearly variations of geomagnetic activity). I calculate that this is a factor of 10 greater than the change in reflected sunlight that results from the 0.1% modulation of the total solar irradiance [TSI] during the solar cycle.
At face value, that would mean the geomagnetic [solar] modulation of cloudiness has about 10 times the effect on the amount of sunlight absorbed by the Earth as does the solar cycle’s direct modulation of the sun’s output.

Neutron (Also in A. wiki)
These neutrons have more energy than fission energy neutrons and are generated in accelerators or in the atmosphere from cosmic particles. They can have energies as high as tens of joules per neutron.

Also relevant to ozone

Variabilities of mesospheric tides and equatorial electrojet strength during major stratospheric warming events (PDF here) (2009)
Abstract. The present study demonstrates the relationship between the high latitude northern hemispheric major sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) events and the reversal in the afternoon equatorial electrojet (EEJ), often called the counter-electrojet (CEJ), during the winter months of 1998–1999, 2001–2002, 2003–2004 and 2005–2006. As the EEJ current system is driven by tidal winds, an investigation of tidal variabilities in the MF radar observed zonal winds during the winters of 1998–1999 and 2005–2006 at 88 km over Tirunelveli, a site close to the magnetic equator, shows that there is an enhancement of semi-diurnal tidal amplitude during the days of a major SSW event and a suppression of the same immediately after the event. The significance of the present results lies in demonstrating the latitudinal coupling between the high latitude SSW phenomenon and the equatorial ionospheric current system with clear evidence for major SSW events influencing the day-to-day variability of the
CEJ.
--From the body:
The forcing of the semi-diurnal tide is mainly due to the absorption of ultraviolet radiation by ozone in the stratosphere and mesosphere and absorption of infrared radiation by water vapour in the troposphere. The tidal variabilities during major warming events could be ascribed to the variability of ozone in the stratosphere and/or convective activity associated with latent heat release in the equatorial troposphere during the events. Kodera (2006) examined the role of the SSW events in equatorial convective activity in the troposphere and found the meridional circulation change associated with the warming led to a seesaw of convective activity in the troposphere with an enhancement of convective activity near the equatorial Southern Hemisphere, but a suppression in the tropics of the Northern Hemisphere. Due to major warming events, denitrification, which is the necessary condition for destruction of ozone, is less intense because of high temperature and hence the destruction of ozone is less in the disturbed northern hemispheric winter (Toon et al., 1989).
--From the discussion/results:
A major outcome of the present study is the observational evidence for the role that major SSW events play in influencing the day-to-day variability of CEJ events through enhancement of semi-diurnal tides. However, the relationship between SSW and semi-diurnal tide is yet to be firmly  established based on solid theoretical understanding, though observations do reveal a linkage between the two.

Impression. Reducing the climate temperature relevant weight given by scientists to their particular theories, I surmise importance should be given to cloud formation by cosmic particles, more to ozone depletion and more still to cloudiness that is partially a product of both the aforementioned, cosmic particles creating particulates for water vapour to collect on and ozone allowing higher levels of UV to warm the oceans, accelerating evaporation.

Asides
The dogma targetting kids as dogmas always do. Andrea Peyser, NYT. Makes you want to do bad things to evil people.

Doomed I tell you DOOMED (Science bod perhaps?) :) http://www.preparingforthegreatshift.org/TOCsummary.htm :)

Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation
Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with the Climategate whitewash, says Christopher Booker.
ClimateGate: 30 years in the making
The web page includes 'CLIMATEGATE: A STORY OF DECEPTION AND INTRIGUE' and 'THE CLIMATEGATE TIMELINE AND THE TICKING TIME BOMB'
(This question is asked: Science has come full-circle, taking a page from the medieval Church by using fear and persecution to silence sceptics. The oppressed have become the oppressors. Given that most professional scientific bodies and peer-reviewed journals have been active accomplices in this scandal, one wonders how many other so called scientific consensuses have been similarly engineered and waiting for their own ClimateGates before truth is known.

My answer, hyped as dangerous  - DDT, - CFCs, - second hand smoke, and flu scares that permit untested drugs to be peddled worldwide come to mind.)

A Climatology Conspiracy? By David H. Douglass and John R. Christy
The CRU e-mails have revealed how the normal conventions of the peer review process appear to have been compromised by a team* of global warming scientists, with the willing cooperation of the editor of the International Journal of Climatology (IJC), Glenn McGregor. The team spent nearly a year preparing and publishing a paper that attempted to rebut a previously published paper in IJC by Douglass, Christy, Pearson, and Singer (DCPS). The DCPS paper, reviewed and accepted in the traditional manner, had shown that the IPCC models that predicted significant "global warming" in fact largely disagreed with the observational data.

Climategate: How To Follow the Money
It appears that most of the Copenhagen participants saw the money they spent as an investment. Here's how December 23, 2009 - by Charlie Martin
There’s big money in climate. (3 pages)
That became strikingly obvious in Copenhagen. The conference itself cost in the neighborhood of $30 million, but that was only the visible tip of the melting iceberg. Add to that the celebrities, the demonstrators, the congressional delegations, and the corporate displays, and you can bet something closer to $60 million was really spent on the conference — along with, of course, a carbon footprint the size of Morocco’s. The one significant outcome of the Copenhagen conference was an agreement to continue the international market in carbon offset trading that would otherwise have expired in 2012 and to prevent a crash in the carbon credits market.
It appears that most of the participants saw the money spent as an investment.
To see why, we need to look at the way Kyoto has turned into cash for many of the biggest names in the climate change world, and to do that we need to understand how the whole carbon trading scheme works.
Simple Carbon Trading
Start with the simple proposition that you want, for whatever reason, to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) being emitted by human activities worldwide. The reasons, of course, are all based on the idea that humans emitting GHGs are causing unexpected and unacceptable changes in the climate. Whether that’s true or not is a topic for other articles; for now, just take it as given.
There are actually a number of GHGs that could be an issue, but the largest share of human-produced GHGs is in carbon dioxide (CO2). So for simplicity, the Kyoto Protocol normalizes everything in terms of CO2 alone, using a number called the global warming potential (GWP). By definition, the global warming potential of CO2 is 1; the highest GWP is for sulfur hexaflouride, a gas used mainly in electrical equipment. Sulfur hexaflouride has a GWP of 23,900, so for Kyoto Protocol purposes, releasing 1 ton of sulfur hexaflouride is considered to be 23,900 tons of CO2.
Now, if there were a king of the world, that dread sovereign might just say: “Hey! Stop emitting GHGs!” And that would be that. In the real world, if you want to reduce GHGs, you have to come up with some kind of scheme to get people to do it (more or less) voluntarily. Governments do this, normally, with taxes. The simplest scheme is just to tax anyone who emits GHGs, charging them enough to pay for the bad effects. Reduce the amount you emit and your taxes go down.
Of course with a government program, and particularly with the UN, nothing is that simple.
Developing countries, particularly India and China, have rapidly growing economies and populations that really enjoy that their standards of living are rising toward first-world levels. These countries, as they improve their standards of living, are necessarily going to release more CO2. In the simple model, they would be expected to pay for those emissions.
Carbon Trading after Kyoto  /continues
Page 1 of 3  Next ->

Condemnation:
Detroit News: Climategate prof raked in $22.6 million in grants (Money for bunkum and your fame for free)

Alarmists in denial about the release of CRU mails and code that were available on a public server:

Greenpeace, the Sierra Club (OMG if it all implodes, where are they to get money for BS from?)

World Bank echoing IPCC twaddle. (OMG if it all implodes the opportunity for EU fraud suffers a severe financial setback.)

Climategate won’t make global warming go away, despite what Delingpole tells you. (Will Heave)
 (No need for JD, the climate is doing a nice job of it regardless of IPCC dictates.)
So. What is it Delingpole tells you?
Climategate goes SERIAL: Climategate just got much, much bigger. And all thanks to the Russians who, with perfect timing, dropped this bombshell just as the world’s leaders are gathering in Copenhagen to discuss ways of carbon-taxing us all back to the dark ages. Feast your eyes on this news release from Rionovosta,
Climategate: the corruption of Wikipedia   If you want to know the truth about Climategate, definitely don’t use Wikipedia. “Climatic Research Unit e-mail controversy”, is its preferred, mealy-mouthed euphemism to describe the greatest scientific scandal of the modern age. Not that you’d ever guess it was a scandal
Climategate: 'It's all lies!' lies Pachauri (again) Surely not even an organisation as a corrupt and dishonest as the IPCC can afford to keep Dr Rajendra Pachauri on as its chairman after the weekend’s damning revelations by Christopher Booker and Richard North? But Pachauri – with all the chutzpah we have come to expect of our favourite jetset
Climategate: it's all unravelling now So many new developments: which story do we pick? Maybe best to summarise, instead. After all, it's not like you're going to find much of this reported in the MSM.
1. Australia's Senate rejects Emissions Trading Scheme for a second time.
Climategate: why David Cameron is going to be disastrous for Britain Just in case you wondered why the Tories – up against the worst British government in living memory – are still doing so relatively badly in the opinion polls, David Cameron gives all the answers in today’s Guardian. As far as he’s concerned, Climategate might never have happened.
Climategate: James Randi forced to recant by Warmist thugs for showing-wrong-kind-of-scepticism You all know James Randi. He’s the world famous Psychic Investigator whose rigorous scepticism has been the undoing of many a fraudulent spoonbender, dodgy faith-healer and ouija-board-wobbling spiritualist. Randi is the expert magician and escape artist who is offering $1 million in his Paranormal Challenge
Climategate: we won the battle, but at Copenhagen we just lost the war Copenhagen has been a disaster for the free world and hardly anyone seems to have noticed. We have been distracted by the sweet schadenfreude as the event was overshadowed by the Climategate scandal at the beginning, and the Russian bombshell at the end.
Climategate: peak oil, the CRU and the Oman connection This is a guest post by contributor Andrew30 (whose full name I’ll give you when he reminds me via email). He put it up in comments but it’s so interesting it really deserves a blog all to itself). Why would a Middle Eastern kingdom be funding a British Climate research business?

Lucia's Blackboard posts here.

Some of Viscount Monckton's articles.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/01/lord-moncktons-summary-of-climategate-and-its-issues/
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/climategate.html
Climategate: Caught Green-Handed!
Himself on youtube

Climategate - Directory of PJTV Coverage:
View Articles and Videos: Interviews, Opinions, Analysis
Click on links in "Climategate Overview" below to view by date or by topic.
CG Document & Email Database -Read and Investigate here.
View the Climategate database of 1,073 emails and 3,485 other documents.
If you want, help us investigate these documents by reading, rating, tagging, and commenting. Click here.

Take the Climategate Survey re Gore, Oscar, Nobel Prize
Do you think Al Gore's Oscar or Nobel Prize should be rescinded , etc  -click here.
PJTV Facebook Group for Climategate
Join the Group - comment, discuss, share -click here.
Climategate Overview
Conspiratorium 101 Articles
Russians Confirm That UK Climate Scientists Manipulated Data To Exaggerate Global Warming
“Climategate”: Peer-Review System Was Hijacked By Warming Alarmists
White House Science Czar Involved in Climategate
The Devastating Book Which Debunks Climate Change
The Climate Change Propaganda Machine

There are a whole lot more, the majority of links by a huge majority are those finding fault compared to those with the predictable attempts at snowing us and making out it doesn't affect the legitimacy of carbon credits, shares, taxes, ETS, some like greenpeace and the sierra club in denial that any wrong doing was committed. The IPCC via the world bank is the funniest, the usual amplification and colour emphasis to attempt to show the lie that the majority of scientists support the fantasy that human emissions have a significant impact on climate. How many dentists were included?
Here is a proper snow job.
877 new snowfall records set or tied in the USA in the last week
Courtesy of the real climate boss, water.

http://www.drroyspencer.com/page/1/ is worth a look as is American Thinker's take-down of realclimate.
*************

Author and journalist, Lawrence Solomon has worked hard to uncover the aspects, motivations and the duplicitous nature of the warming by human emissions of carbon dioxide dogma. For that he has been rewarded with disparagement by alarmists in denial.

[Ice cores show the MWP, it is just not mentioned by the alarmist IPCC, alarmist journals or the alarmist MSM, see WUWT here. (Scroll to "The South pole and MWP:")]

Wikipedia’s climate doctor.
December 19, 2009
The Climategate Emails describe how a small band of climatologists cooked the books to make the last century seem dangerously warm.
The emails also describe how the band plotted to rewrite history as well as science, particularly by eliminating the Medieval Warm Period, a 400 year period that began around 1000 AD.
The Climategate Emails reveal something else, too: the enlistment of the most widely read source of information in the world — Wikipedia — in the wholesale rewriting of this history.
The Medieval Warm Period, which followed the meanness and cold of the Dark Ages, was a great time in human history — it allowed humans around the world to bask in a glorious warmth that vastly improved agriculture, increased life spans and otherwise bettered the human condition.

Wikipedia's hockey stick wars.
December 23
Since my Saturday column described how Wikipedia editors have been feverishly rewriting climate history over much of the decade, fair-minded Wikipedians have been doing their best to correct the record. No sooner than they remove gross distortions, however, than the distortions are replaced. William Connolley, a Climategate member and Wikipedia's chief climate change propagandist, remains as active as ever.
How does Wikipedia work and how do Connolley and his co-conspirators exercise control? Take Wikipedia's page for Medieval Warm Period, as an example. In the three days following my column's appearance, this page alone was changed some 50 times in battles between Connolley's crew and those who want a fair presentation of history.

(Lawrence brought another zealot to our attention in 2008
Wikipedia's Zealots: Solomon Kim Dabelstein Petersen named.)

Read all His articles in the National Post

Specials:

The Deniers

The Deniers Part I - Statistics needed
II - Warming is real -- and has benefits --
III - The hurricane expert who stood up to UN junk science
IV - Polar scientists on thin ice
V - The original denier: into the cold
VI - The sun moves climate change
Part VII - Will the sun cool us?
VIII - The limits of predictability
IX - Look to Mars for the truth on global warming
X - Limited role for C02
XI - End the chill
XII - Clouded research
XIII - Allegre's second thoughts
XIV - The heat's in the sun
XV - Unsettled Science
XVI - Bitten by the IPCC
XVII - Little ice age is still within us
XVIII - Fighting climate 'fluff'
XIX - Science, not politics
XX - Gore's guru disagreed
XXI - The ice-core man
XXII - Some restraint in Rome
XXIII - Discounting logic
XXIV - Dire forecasts aren't new
XXV - They call this a consensus?
XXVI - NASA chief Michael Griffin silenced
XXVII Forget warming - beware the new ice age
XXVIII Open mind sees climate clearly
XXIX Models trump measurements
XXX What global warming, Australian skeptic asks
XXXI In the eye of the storm of global warming
XXXII From chaos, coherence
XXXIII The aerosol man
XXXIV The Hot Trend is cool yachts
XXXV You still need your parka in Antarctica
XXXVI IPCC too blinkered and corrupt
XXXVII Why melting of ice sheets 'is impossible'
XXXVIII Climate change by Jupiter
XXXIX Green hero slammed as climate heretic

The Climate Profiteers (in progress)
Enron's Other Secret
Climate insurance
Hot climate premiums
DuPont’s new game
Fill up with subsidies
Profitin’ in the wind Carbon baron Gore
The free luncher: Exelon

Books;
The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global...
Toronto Sprawls: A History (University of Toronto Centre for Public…
The Conserver Solution
The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global…
In the Name of Progress: The Underside of Foreign Aid.
Energy shock: After the oil runs out
College Board Achievement Test, Biology

Amazon's about page here.

Interview with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy here. (PDF here)
MP3 "The science is not settled" here.
MP3 "Lawrence Solomon And The Petroleum Club, Drive Thru Ban: A Done Deal? - Or A Deal Done?" here.

On Dr. Weiss denying he is a denier (funding related?), with ref. to his claim that the Sun plays only a minor role:
Satellite measurements show our quiet sun is cooling the upper thermosphere
Google

Executive director of Urban Renaissance, Lawrence maintains a blog on that site.

The judiciary is owned. £10bn of rip-off overdraft charges won't be refunded 
By Sean Poulter 23rd December 2009
Banks will be able to keep £10billion from rip-off overdraft charges after the Office of Fair Trading abandoned a legal challenge yesterday. Millions of customers have been hit by the charges, with some forced to pay hundreds of pounds just for going a few pence into the red. But the watchdog has decided it can no longer pursue its claim that the fees are unfair after a surprise Supreme Court ruling last month that sided with the banks. Charges remain: Banks will keep the £2.6billion in unauthorised overdraft fees they collected in the past yearThe court said that the OFT had no jurisdiction over the charges and no right to reach a ruling that would have paved the way for customers to claim a refund. Some estimates had suggested that the banks would have faced repaying more than £10billion if they had lost. The OFT's decision was described as a 'huge blow' for consumers yesterday. / continues

Nine die in -16C Arctic Britain as Christmas getaway descends into chaos
How much colder would it have been without global warming?? A stable warm climate is better than an ice age. Shame CO2 doesn't drive the climate. We need more CO2 not less, for the trees.

Children treated for cocaine addiction rises 50% since 2006
It's long past time to legalise cannabis and free up police resources, people made criminal by using a harmless herb should be pardoned to free up gaol space instead of buying it off hardened criminals. 

Bribed to quit Britain: Foreign criminals offered up to £5000 if they agree to go home
Rapists, muggers and burglars are being offered credit cards pre-loaded with cash as part of a package worth up to £5,000 designed to 'bribe' them to leave the UK.

This damned government of idiots, liars, crooks and Brown can't give our public funds (borrowed money) away quickly enough. National debt is well beyond 50% GDP and growing fast. Near enough 100% if the pension commitments are included. The country is on the verge of bankruptcy along with Spain and Ireland.
 
Insolvency soars as record 33,000 people go bankrupt in just three months 
27,000 firms go bust (and the same again are at risk)

AND

Families hit by the worst wages crash in 50 years
Part of the green agenda is the destabilization of western countries by lowering living standards not least by reducing education standards, forcing poverty by whatever means - hiked energy, food and fuel prices, inflation, unemployment and bankruptcies, along with attacks on currencies, gaming the financial markets and excessive immigration of muslims with a proclivity toward overburdening the social security systems and importation of foreign labour all to discredit democracy .

Universities' annual funding reduced by £398m
Universities facing £80 million fines on top of budget cuts 
Two more politicians facing expenses fraud charges as police hand over new file  Banks, the judiciary, euro and local MPs, climate "scientists", the media, liars, cheats, thieves. I don't know about anarchy but it is a thieves paradise and heaven for con artists not only for the aforementioned, also for the likes of the EU and UN and many duplicitous campaigners and lobbying orgs (paid for with public money and donations) wanting us back in the stone age and using the climate dogma to achieve their evil ends.
Fury over £130million Whitehall bonus payout Fury over £130million Whitehall bonus payout.
The only way to get things back in control of the public is to withhold taxes until the present incumbents that serve the EU are replaced by some that face our way.
Rift between Brown and Mandelson could torpedo Labour election fightback.
The EU's heavy? Probably a diversionary tactic. If not, only good news for those of us who have actually researched and found little other than speculation to support the wild fantasy that the human fraction of 2 parts per million carbon dioxide - the sum including natural emissions - per annum drive the climate.

Climate Wars - please watch the following clips before Steve McIntyre's CNN appearance.
Nopenhagen: The Truth is Missing From the Climate Debate.
Bill Whittle. Was O.J guilty? Then why believe the CO2 dogma?

Climate Contrarians: A Skeptics Review of Climate-Change.
Roger L. Simon - 3rd world delegates admitted they were totally sceptical of the science, they were just there for the dole [from the cash finessed from Europeans by twisters using lies as justification - the UNEP-EU scammers were there for funds too - that the 3rd world likely will never see by the time the world gov project and bent bureaucrats have taken their bite].
Bill Whittle - 3 sets of homogenised data based on 1 set of [NOAA's GHCN] homogenised data... they [100,000 scientists]are all working with garbage...

Stephen McIntyre, Chris Horner & Michael Oppenheimer on climategate. 
Why Barry Jones is wrong
by Bob Carter December 21, 2009
Professor Bob Carter replies to Mr. Barry Jones
On December 8, ABC’s The Drum – Unleashed posted an opinion piece of mine entitled “Kill the IPCC”. As submitted the piece was entitled, a little more gracefully, I think, “The bell tolls for the IPCC” [full text published in Quadrant Online here]. But the essential message can be represented by either heading.
And that the IPCC should be closed down was indeed the essential message that I wished to convey. For during its 20 year-long existence it has done incalculable economic and political damage (which continues in Copenhagen as I write), but above all else it is the damage that the IPCC has inflicted upon Science that concerns me.
Our citizenry used to able to rely upon practitioners of the scientific method to provide dispassionate analysis of the pros and cons of a problem of public concern. But no longer, I fear, as Climategate has recently displayed.
After my article was posted, there ensued a day or so of busy emailing at The Drum, which included the writing of over 500 blog postings. The authors of most of these contributions seemed particularly upset that the ABC had permitted the expression of a climate rationalist viewpoint - and allegedly an ignorant one at that – on the website of what they had hoped was a balanced public broadcaster.
The rush of emails was shortly followed by an article on The Drum by former Labor Science Minister, Mr. Barry Jones, entitled (doubtless by the editor) “Bob Carter’s attack on reason”, which seems to have been intended as a commentary on, and perhaps a reply to, my own original posting. By December 20, Mr Jones’ piece had attracted a further 792 blog comments, most of which supported his views.
In turn, therefore, I now provide this reply to eight of the points that Mr. Jones raises.
1. Mr Jones has the impression that the press are anxious to publish the views of independent climate scientists, saying “How easy it is for climate sceptics to obtain media coverage”. /continues

CCNET newsletter
Dr. Peiser found the following amongst others noteworthy.
CCNet 180/2009 - 22 December 2009

Audiatur et altera pars

AFTER COPENHAGEN: TIME FOR PLAN B
It is now widely recognised that the misguided Copenhagen Conference was a complete failure. Those political leaders and policy makers who refuse to accept this reality are merely burying their heads in the sand and are forfeiting the trust of the public.   
The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 20 December 2009

The world's political leaders, not least President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Gordon Brown, are in a state of severe, almost clinical, denial. They insist that what has been achieved in Copenhagen is a breakthrough and a decisive step forward. Just one more heave, just one more venue for the great climate-change traveling circus - Mexico City next year - and the job will be done. Or so we are told. It is, of course, the purest nonsense. The time has come to abandon the Kyoto-style folly that reached its apotheosis in Copenhagen last week, and move to plan B. 
Nigel Lawson, The Wall Street Journal, 22 December 2009

The biggest losers of the Copenhagen fiasco appear to be climate science and the scientific establishment who, with a very few distinguished exceptions, have promoted unmitigated climate alarm and hysteria. It confirms beyond doubt that most governments have lost trust in the advice given by climate alarmists and the IPCC. The Copenhagen accord symbolises the loss of political power by Europe whose climate policies have been rendered obsolete.
Benny Peiser, The Observer, 20 December 2009 PDF here.

India hailed Tuesday the lack of targets and legally binding measures in the Copenhagen climate accord and vaunted the united front presented by major emerging countries at the chaotic talks. Facing parliament for the first time since the UN talks last weekend in the Danish capital, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said India had "come out quite well in Copenhagen". The Copenhagen accord "bears in mind that the social and economic development and poverty eradication are the first and overriding priorities of developing countries," Ramesh said.
AFP, 22 December 2009

Senior Conservatives are to lobby Republicans in the US Senate to persuade them to back a climate emissions Bill. As the Tory leadership struggled to prevent party sceptics from dominating the environmental argument after the Copenhagen summit, David Cameron pledged to continue the work started in Denmark in trying to find a legally binding climate change agreement. Tory environment ministers believe that they can play a role nudging moderate Republicans to support the Bill. Hopes are rising that laws might be agreed before next year's talks in Bonn and Mexico after the Copenhagen accord agreed that emissions reductions will be monitored "with provisions for international consultations and analysis".
Sam Coates, The Times, 22 December 2009

CCNet is a science policy network edited by Benny Peiser. To subscribe, send an e-mail to listserver@ljmu.ac.uk
"subscribe CCNet-News" in the subject field.

Hat tips - Climate Realists, Junk Science, Daily Mail, Alarmist Gorgle News, SPPI, V. Monckton,

The data for the Briffa et al. version of the hockey stick looks to have been selected to support the IPCC position. This follows a pattern.
Dr. Hansen, GISS leader adjusts their temperature records constantly, disproportionately favouring warming.
NOAA has been accused of omitting unsupportive data.
Both venues are favoured by the IPCC.
Now the Hadley CRU, another IPCC favoured org is under the microscope.

I waited till today to see what sort of defence would be mounted. None so far.

The AGW zombie staked with another hockey stick. Jump to the end for links to the original articles in full.

(Layman's guide to the intrigue link)

Steve McIntyre, nemesis of warmist scientists has uncovered and deduced evidence of either enormous incompetence or outright deception on the parts of the hockey stick team and Climate Research Unit of the Hadley Centre associated with the UK Met. Office. Data used to produce the hockey stick came from that archived by the CRU. That data appears to have been selected from a much larger sample. When all the data is considered, something remarkable comes to light. Warming disappears. This truly remarkable piece of detective work demands at the very least a nobel peace prize, preferably that which the IPCC and Al Gore will be returning.

From Steve's post - Yamal: A "Divergence" Problem link:

Red, using the data selected for the hockey stick, black using the non selected data and green using both.

Ross McKitrick Sept 27th, 2009 link

Here's a re-cap of this saga that should make clear the stunning importance of what Steve has found. One point of terminology: a tree ring record from a site is called a chronology, and is made up of tree ring records from individual trees at that site. Multiple tree ring series are combined using standard statistical algorithms that involve detrending and averaging (these methods are not at issue in this thread). A good chronology–good enough for research that is–should have at least 10 trees in it, and typically has much more.

1. In a 1995 Nature paper by Briffa, Schweingruber et al., they reported that 1032 was the coldest year of the millennium - right in the middle of the Medieval Warm Period. But the reconstruction depended on 3 short tree ring cores from the Polar Urals whose dating was very problematic. www.climateaudit.org/?p=877.

2. In the 1990s, Schweingruber obtained new Polar Urals data with more securely-dated cores for the MWP. Neither Briffa nor Schweingruber published a new Polar Urals chronology using this data. An updated chronology with this data would have yielded a very different picture, namely a warm medieval era and no anomalous 20th century. Rather than using the updated Polar Urals series, Briffa calculated a new chronology from Yamal - one which had an enormous hockey stick shape. After its publication, in virtually every study, Hockey Team members dropped Polar Urals altogether and substituted Briffa's Yamal series in its place.
www.climateaudit.org/?p=528. PS: The exception to this pattern was Esper et al (Science) 2002, which used the combined Polar Urals data. But Esper refused to provide his data. Steve got it in 2006 after extensive quasi-litigation with Science (over 30 email requests and demands).

3. Subsequently, countless studies appeared from the Team that not only used the Yamal data in place of the Polar Urals, but where Yamal had a critical impact on the relative ranking of the 20th century versus the medieval era.
www.climateaudit.org/?p=3099

4. Meanwhile Briffa repeatedly refused to release the Yamal measurement data used inhis calculation despite multiple uses of this series at journals that claimed to require data archiving. E.g. www.climateaudit.org/?p=542

5. Then one day Briffa et al. published a paper in 2008 using the Yamal series, again without archiving it. However they published in a Phil Tran Royal Soc journal which has strict data sharing rules. Steve got on the case. www.climateaudit.org/?p=3266

6. A short time ago, with the help of the journal editors, the data was pried loose and appeared at the CRU web site. www.climateaudit.org/?p=7142

7. It turns out that the late 20th century in the Yamal series has only 10 tree ring chronologies after 1990 (5 after 1995), making it too thin a sample to use (according to conventional rules). But the real problem wasn't that there were only 5-10 late 20th century cores- there must have been a lot more. They were only using a subset of 10 cores as of 1990, but there was no reason to use a small subset. (Had these been randomly selected, this would be a thin sample, but perhaps passable. But it appears that they weren't randomly selected.)
www.climateaudit.org/?p=7142

8. Faced with a sample in the Taymir chronology that likely had 3-4 times as many series as the Yamal chronology, Briffa added in data from other researchers' samples taken at the Avam site, some 400 km away. He also used data from the Schweingruber sampling program circa 1990, also taken about 400 km from Taymir. Regardless of the merits or otherwise of pooling samples from such disparate locations, this establishes a precedent where Briffa added a Schweingruber site to provide additional samples. This, incidentally, ramped up the hockey-stickness of the (now Avam-) Taymir chronology.
www.climateaudit.org/?p=7158

9. Steve thus looked for data from other samples at or near the Yamal site that could have been used to increase the sample size in the Briffa Yamal chronology. He quickly discovered a large set of 34 Schweingruber samples from living trees. Using these instead of the 12 trees in the Briffa (CRU) group that extend to the present yields Figure 2, showing a complete divergence in the 20th century. Thus the Schweingruber data completely contradicts the CRU series. Bear in mind the close collaboration of Schweingruber and Briffa all this time, and their habit of using one another's data as needed.

10. Combining the CRU and Schweingruber data yields the green line in the 3rd figure above. While it doesn't go down at the end, neither does it go up, and it yields a medieval era warmer than the present, on the standard interpretation. Thus the key ingredient in a lot of the studies that have been invoked to support the Hockey Stick, namely the Briffa Yamal series (red line above) depends on the influence of a thin subsample of post-1990 chronologies and the exclusion of the (much larger) collection of readily-available Schweingruber data for the same area.
_____________________________

Calls for an explanation or resignations have been made. I would go further, I believe that on an issue of such importance, let's face it, the world has been inconvenienced to a huge degree and people have died as a direct result of policies based on the data, the veracity should be tested in court.

Leading UK Climate Scientists Must Explain or Resign link
by Jennifer Marohasy
[...] Mr McIntyre’s analysis of the data – which he had been asking for since 2003 – suggests that scientists at the Climate Research Unit of the Hadley Centre associated with the UK Met. Office  have been using only a small subset of the available data to make their claims that recent years have been the hottest of the last millennium.   When the entire data set is used, Mr McIntyre claims that the hockey stick shape disappears completely. [1]    

Mr McIntyre has previously showed problems with the mathematics behind the ‘hockey stick’.   But scientists at the Climate Research Centre (CRU), in particular Dr Briffa, have continuously republished claiming the upswing in temperatures over the last 100 years is real and not an artifact of the methodology used – as claimed by Mr McIntyre.     However, these same scientists have denied Mr McIntyre access to all the data.    Recently they were forced to make more data available to Mr McIntyre after they published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society  -  a journal which unlike Nature and Science has strict policies on data archiving which it enforces.  
 
This week’s claims by Steve McIntyre that scientists associated with the UK Met. Office have been less than diligent  are serious and suggest some of the most defended building blocks of the case for anthropogenic global warming are based on the indefensible when the methodology is laid bare.  

This sorry saga also raises issues  associated with how data is archived at the UK Met. Office with incomplete data sets that spuriously support the case for global warming being promoted while complete data sets are kept hidden from the public –  including from scientific sceptics like Steve McIntyre. (continues)

From the comments:
Richard S Courtney Oct. 1st, 2009 link

[@] Nick Stokes: You wrongly assert to me:
"Richard “Briffa failed to state any criteria he used for his selection.”
This just isn’t true. He said
“Siberian larch (Larix sibirica) data from the area immediately east of the northern Ural Mountains, previously used by Hantemirov & Shiyatov (2002), were used as the Yamal regional chronology”
He’s using a data set which was previously used in the literature, and has made that clear. So you have to make a case that it was nonetheless necessary for him to use this alternative data. And I just can’t see it.”

Sorry, but your claim supports my statements that you dispute.

I said:
“Data which were in the possession of Briffa have been obtained for scrutiny by the scientific community. This revealed that there was a large data set and Briffa selected from that data set for conduct of his analysis. He published that analysis and its results.
But, importantly,
Briffa failed to state that he had selected from a larger data set
and
Briffa failed to state any criteria he used for his selection.

These failures invalidate Briffa’s analysis. Indeed, they are a severe scientific malpractice that is tantamount to fraud in that they misrepresent the analysis which Briffa conducted.”

It does not matter that Hantemirov & Shiyatov (or anybody else) had used that selection: perhaps that is all the data that was available to them.

But it does matter that Briffa had the full data and chose to use a sub-set of it for an unstated reason. His paper could, for example, have claimed that he used that sub-set for comparison to Hantemirov & Shiyatov (2002) but, of course, that comparison study would have been a different study for a different purpose than the paper Briffa published.

Clearly, you have not grasped the point, so compare these two statements:

“We analysed the available data”
and
“We analysed a selection from the available data but we are not stating our reason(s) for making that selection and we will not allow others to see the data we chose not to use.

Can you not understand the difference?

The statement of a prima facia case of scientific malpractice against Briffa is not – as you assert – “ridiculous”: it is simply fact.

Richard
______

vg Oct. 1st, 2009 link

I think resign will be the minimum. I would not be surprised if major lawsuits are initiated worldwide for damages etc… once the reality of this sinks in. I still think it will take a few more days or weeks. The AGW are of course hoping this will go away with time.. so no discussion on this allowed. Im sure this is their policy currently. There is no choice for them now.
______

So there you have it. Strong evidence that harmful AGW aka climate change is at  least a misconception and very likely the result of malpractice. The IPCC must be aware that the data was dodgy because of their excellent review procedure. What say you Ban ki-Moon?

Jennifer Marohasy's post link
Steve McIntyre's posts
Briffa's Avam-Taimyr Series link 1
Fresh Data on Briffa's Yamal #1 link2
Yamal: A "Divergence" Problem link3.

The prettiest contrarian, Jo Nova condemned it with vigour: link

DT writer James Delingpole commented on the HS a couple of days ago: link

Mail and DT columnist Chistopher Booker wrote earlier in September: link

Physicist Lubos Motl: link

WUWT: link

Air Vent: link

A momentary lapse of concentration let my mind wander in the mire of Fagin politics.

In my opinion, Cameron is willing to risk defeat to stay under the heel of the europarl. He must figure a small majority or hung parliament is better than giving the UKIP that would have membership vote a chance of majority.

I can't see any other reason for him not opposing Brown's stance.
 
Another thought crosses my mind, I wonder if there is a pre-election agreement being made or already made with eulab, the parties are so close it seems illogical not to talk of an alliance. But necessary to keep it confidential before the election because the betrayal of the party faithful would certainly cost them votes.

--------------------

I have another suspicion. The news media that has expressed such enthusiasm for the promotion of green dogma are now realising that as the dogma punishment bites into income, newspaper purchase is very near top of the list as expendable. Arm waving green journalists must be at the top of the disposables list as cut backs inevitably bite home.

Wind farmology took a kick to the vitals as a huge promoter in the US, Pickens canned his plans when he couldn't get investment for infrastructure. The benefit light movement hasn't quite bought the farm but it is in a downward spiral.

abcnews

Justice doesn't always favour the wrong.

I'm making myself tired for nothing.
Top Aussie scientists have proposed a Royal Commission may be the answer to determining the veracity of IPCC opinions on carbon dioxide poisoning the climate.

"Parliament should defer consideration of the CPRS bill and institute a fully independent Royal Commission of enquiry into the evidence for and against a dangerous human influence on climate."

Read and believe: Link or copy-paste this into the address bar -

joannenova.com.au/2009/07/03/scientists-call-for-royal-commission-into-climate-change-science/

The paper - Minister Wong’s Reply to Senator Fielding’s
Three Questions on Climate Change – Due Diligence
Contributors:
Bob Carter
David Evans
Stewart Franks
William Kininmonth

They pretty much conclude what I did. (Gis a job).

Heaven forbid such a thing could happen in the UK, the government wouldn't have the balls. Would they?

Cost-benefit of political membership of the EU? Nah, no way.

From Motl's blog - link

I hope. For everyone's sake.

Australian Senator Responded 1

Australian Senator Responded 2

Question 3

Is it the case that all GCM computer models projected a steady increase in temperature for the period 1990-2008, whereas in fact there were only 8 years of warming were(sic) followed by 10 years of stasis and cooling.

Correct answer - Yes

If so, why is it assumed that long-term climate projections by the same models are suitable as a basis for public policy making?

Correct answer - Bad advice

It is not the case that all GCM computer models projected a steady increase in temperature for the period 1990-2008.

As noted above, air temperatures are affected by natural variability. Global Climate Models show this variability but are not able to predict when such variations will happen.

The Global Climate Model data presented in the IPCC Fourth Assessment are averages of many individual simulations. By averaging across simulations natural variability is 'smoothed over' and the result shows only the underlying trend due to large-scale forcings such as greenhouse gases. This is illustrated below. The coloured lines are individual 'realisations' or simulations of global average temperature over the period 1950 to 2020 using a particular model (called 20C3M). The dark line is the average of the individual realisations.

The figure below shows that GCM simulations do capture the decadal patterns of variability evident in the temperature record. They do not predict a steady, uninterrupted increase in air temperatures. The left panel shows two periods - 1977-1985 and 1981-1989 - in the global average air temperature record where no substantial warming was observed, although they are embedded in the longer term trend that does show substantial warming. GCMs reflect this type of pattern. The right panel shows a GCM-based projection of 21st century global average air temperature using a single realisation. Note that the 2001-2010 period and the 2016-2031 period show no significant trend although the century-scale trend is one of strong warming - between 3 and 4°C.

Therefore, GCMs can and do simulate decade-long periods of no warming, or even slight cooling, embedded in longer-term warming trends.

VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

A simple question. Model forecasts are supposed to become more accurate the further into the future from the initiation of the model we get. How can that be true for homogenised wrong model projections that increasingly diverge as is obvious even in this illustration that only shows to 2020?

If all the model projections were aligned at a common point such as the temperature in June 1988, how diverse would the results be at 2020? That there is no common point suggests graph-craft, manipulation to show the best result.

Models are useless for climate prediction because they don't predict.
Models are useless for projection because assumptions are obligatory for climate factors such as atmospheric nuclear bomb detonations, solar variation, ocean oscillations, air current changes, aerosol variation, cloudiness, water vapour, precipitation, ice extent, volcanic and tectonic activity, land use change and others.

Aspects of climate science are scorned because the science has become a political football. It gets funding inappropriate to its value. Opinion and modelled projections take preference over reality. Climate science is advancing. Maybe in a few decades it will be somewhere near useful for long term policy decision making. As of now, it isn't. Bigger computers merely get the wrong results faster.

In the situation we have at present, insufficient data to compute, ongoing investment in climate projection is akin to investment in astrology.

CO2 is a component of the atmosphere that as a whole moderates climate. Warmed air rises and cools. That is the biggest climate temperature factor. Yet a gas of 0.038% of the whole atmosphere that reacts to radiation that is barely identifiable as measurable heat is given higher importance. Human additions at 3.4% of ~2 parts per million p.a. additions to 0.038% is fancied to influence the climate detrimentally. 0.07% is fancied to cause the sky to fall.

Wanna buy a bridge?

***************************************************

Finally, if the aforementioned is insufficient to show the wrongness of the IPCC support for CO2 "greenhouse" hypothesis, then the following should.

Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Link
A non technical summary that should be read in conjunction with the full paper - link. The average Joe/Jolene may be overwhelmed by the mathematics. Skip them. They are the mathematically logical steps to illustrate and evidence the accompanying texts. The document is not difficult to understand and the points covered leave little room for dispute.

From the n-t summary:

Section 3.6 the classic hypotheses of Fourier, Tyndall and Arrhenius are analysed in detail, followed by modern versions of it, and it is concluded that :
• In the 70s, computer simulations of the "global climate" predicted for a doubling of the CO2 concentration a temperature rise of about 0.7 – 9.6 degrees Kelvin.
• Later computer simulations pointed towards a null effect.
• In the IPCC 1992 report, computer simulations of the “global climate" predicted a global temperature rise of about 0.27 - 0.82K per decade.
• In the IPCC 1995 report, computer simulations of the “global climate" predicted a global temperature rise of about 0.08 - 0.33K per decade
• In 2005, computer simulations of the “global climate" predicted for a doubling of the CO2 concentration a global temperature rise of about 2 - 12K, whereby six so-called scenarios have been omitted that yield a global cooling.
To derive climate catastrophes from these computer games and to scare mankind to death is a crime.

Section 5 is the final section of the paper and contains the ‘Physicist’s Summary’, which the reader of this non-technical summary is again urged to review in its entirety. Simply quoting these few lines do an injustice to the entire paper, but set the tone for discrediting the fallacy the UN IPCC is perpetuating, aided in no small measure by many a skeptical scientist who also fails to grasp the fallacy of the so-called greenhouse effect with its double-counting of radiant energy.

Ends with: “The natural greenhouse effect is a myth, not a physical reality. The CO2-greenhouse effect, however, is a manufactured mirage.
Horrific visions of a rising sea level, melting pole caps and spreading deserts in North America and Europe are fictitious consequences of a fictitious physical mechanism which cannot be seen even in computer climate models.
More and more, the main tactic of CO2-greenhouse gas defenders seems to be to hide behind a mountain of pseudo-explanations that are unrelated to an academic education or even to physics training.
The points discussed here were to answer whether the supposed atmospheric effect in question has a physical basis. It does not.
In summary, no atmospheric greenhouse effect, nor in particular a CO2-greenhouse effect, is permissible in theoretical physics and engineering thermodynamics.

It is therefore illegitimate to use this fictitious phenomenon to extrapolate predictions as consulting solutions for economics and intergovernmental policy.”

See also: jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/03/radica...

Australian Senator Responded 1

Australian Senator Responded 2

Australian Senator Responded 1

Re. Response to 3 questions, Q2.

Question 2

Is it the case that the rate and magnitude of warming between 1979 and 1998 (the late 20th century phase of global warming) was not unusual in either rate or magnitude as compared with warmings that have occurred earlier in the Earth's history?
Correct answer - Yes.

While the Earth's temperature has been warmer in the geological past than it is today, the magnitude and rate of change is unusual in a geological context.

The Little Ice Age was an usual event in its depth and brevity. A comparable event has not been found. Comparing emergence to real ice age events is not appropriate and to say the rapidity of emergence is unusual is to state belief thus:

Evidence from ice cores shows that between ice ages and warm inter-glacial periods temperatures increased by 4 to 7°C. However this was a gradual process taking approximately 5,000 years. More rapid changes in temperature, such as those associated with the well-known Dansgaard-Oeschger events during the last ice age, are not global but rather highly regional in character. Globally, the Earth has already experienced warming of 0.76°C since 1850, a very rapid change in geological terms.

Ice cores are also regional. Cores of ice laid down in sub zero temperatures record discrete events (snow) that at the very least have a problem of resolution due to compression causing smoothing or smearing that defies identification of rapid events. To suggest certain knowledge is simply propaganda. Vostok ice can take thousands of years to close (cease interacting with air) due to the lack of snowfall. It is arid.

In terms of timescales of importance for humans, the last 2,000 years are most relevant, because this is the period over which our civilisations have developed. 2 steps forward in warm eras and one step back in cool eras.

www.longrangeweather.com

The only reference to historic and prehistoric times we have is
proxies that don't give good resolution. The best that can be
said is there have been much hotter times and with low CO2
and much colder times and with high CO2. The warmest
temperature measured at Vostok in recent times is -12.2°C.

(Image from Globalwarmingart)

The figure below shows an 1800-year northern hemisphere air temperature record including a variety of estimates of past temperature trends. The light grey shading indicates the uncertainties surrounding these estimates and thus represents the envelope of natural variability over the past 1800 years. The red line at the right is the instrumental record since 1850. The broken red line is the "committed" additional temperature rise due to the thermal inertia of the ocean.
This highly contested claim was covered in "Re. response to 3 questions. Q1". The relevant links were "anomalous-spike-in-ocean-heat-content", "Have Changes In Ocean Heat Falsified The Global Warming Hypothesis?" and "Comments On A New Paper “Global Ocean Heat Content 1955–2008 In Light Of Recently Revealed Instrumentation Problems".
Even without this additional rise, the current observed temperature is now outside the envelope of natural variability over the past 1800 years and thus would certainly be considered "unusual".

If the warming was not unusual, why is it perceived to have been caused by humans carbon dioxide emissions;

The correct answer is - justification of existence, justification of funding and achievement of agenda, profit being one of the many.

and in any event, why is warming a problem if the Earth has experienced similar warmings in the past?

The correct answer is - Polar bears don't look as pretty on bare earth.

As noted above, the current warming is unusual as past changes have been triggered by natural forcings whereas there are no known natural climate forcings, such as changes in solar irradiance, that can explain the current observed warming of the climate system. It can only be explained by the increase in greenhouse gases due to human activities.

The aforesaid is unsubstantiated opinion. Cloudiness, water vapour, changing currents in the air and water, ocean oscillations, ozone, methane levels, aerosols, biomass expansion, urban heat islands etc. etc. etc. all contribute to warming. Not least solar influence that is the only source that can actually raise the energy available in the system is gaining increasing attention.

Image from Ice cap used to illustrate the paper "Evidence for a solar signature in 20th-century temperature"

Meanwhile on another planet: . 
The greenhouse effect is a well-understood physical phenomenon, like gravity.
The hypothesised incorrectly named "greenhouse" effect is well understood. There is scant real world observational evidence to support it and peer reviewed science that contests it.
Greenhouse gases have a known ability to absorb heat emitted from the Earth's surface and re-emit it in the lower atmosphere.
Greenhouse gases have an estimated ability to absorb energy (dependent on ambient temperature) of low frequencies emitted from the Earth's surface that escapes the troposphere in various ways at various frequencies due to various factors such as friction and collision. Energy in the lower atmosphere is in constant flux between energy forms.
The net effect - measured as "radiative forcing" - is to increase the heat content at the Earth's surface.
 The net effect is "radiative forcing" that is an estimate of how much of the estimated energy that is radiated from the Earth's surface is intercepted by the atmosphere. The calculations use hypothetical numbers as high as 41% of the Earth's total energy emission is transmitted as infrared. That is very, very high and is guessed so to produce the volume necessary to make CO2 a significant GHG. Real world measurement of IR emission by the surface, especially in CO2's range has never been undertaken despite its ease because? Satellite measurements are of IR that is not intercepted. A value for emission by the surface is assumed.

By ignoring other important methods of conveying energy from the surface to the air, not least evaporation, convection, conduction: Radiative forcing is the common currency for the effect of all factors that influence the heat content at the Earth's surface - solar irradiance, surface reflectivity, greenhouse gas concentrations, and so on. Analysis (of modelling?) of the climatic shift between the last ice age and the present warm period gives the likely wrong quantitative relationship between the change in radiative forcing and the resulting change in global air temperature because the numbers are assumed due to lack of data; this relationship includes all known feedbacks within the climate system, the value of those whose value isn't known being assumed, in an empirical way that is derived without using models (guessed?). Applying (force fitting) this relationship to the post-1850 warming shows that the magnitude of the warming at equilibrium (that is when the system settles into a stable state) is in proportion to the assumed change in radiative forcing, which in turn is largely due to (piracy, the cost of postage and) the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases (that is, solar irradiance and surface reflectivity have not changed significantly over this period on another planet whilst here on Earth solar irradiance increased throughout last century and albedo changed greatly every year between summer and winter and decade to decade).

Correlation does not prove causation. Besides, CO2 does not correlate.

The volume and effects of cloud, aerosols and ozone that regulate incoming solar radiation, of water vapour that is the main regulator of Earth radiation, the variation and effect of albedo such as ice, crops, water, the values for energy leaving the Earth's surface by conduction, convection, evaporation, radiation etc. are unknown. They have to be guessed, input to models and jiggled to produce a result that is claimed to be of value.

Still on another planet:
The evidence is thus very strong that the post-1850 warming trend is primarily caused by the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to human activities.

The reason that the post-1850 warming trend is believed to be important is because it is believed to be moving the Earth outside of the selected proxy derived climatic envelope - the selected proxy derived patterns of natural variability - within which contemporary civilisation has developed and thrived and within which the ecosystems on which we depend have evolved. For example, it is believed that many plants and animals will be unable to adapt quickly enough to the warming trend (i.e. warmer summer evenings, shorter winters), believed to be placing them at risk of extinction. The increased temperature of summer evenings and winter will also alter natural systems such as the hydrological cycle, changing the rainfall patterns that constantly alter without help from humans on which humans have become dependent.

That contradicts the logic that says longer growing seasons with higher productivity due to higher CO2 levels makes for higher crop yields, extends habitat that increases wildlife numbers and makes almost everyone better off than in a cooling climate.

(Selected) Research shows that Australia is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and that these impacts will become increasingly severe over time. River flow in the Murray-Darling Basin may decline by 10 to 25 percent by 2050 and by 2100 irrigated agriculture may decline by 92 percent. The Garnaut Review based on biased IPCC science also found that the climate change impacts on infrastructure will have a significant effect on Australia's output and consumption of goods and services, and that the costs of adaptation could be high. In summary, if the current warming trend is allowed to continue unabated (said as if we could influence it without a shred of evidence that we can) through the rest of this century and beyond, the risk of impacts to which contemporary society cannot adapt rises sharply.

Prof. R. M. Carter (PhD BSc) in his Sept 2008 essay wrote;
Before human-caused global warming can become an economic problem, it first has to be identified by scientific study as a dangerous hazard for the planet, distinct from natural climate change.
This notwithstanding, a number of distinguished economists have recently written compendious papers or reports on the issue, for example Nicholas Stern (2006) and William Nordhaus (2007); in Australia, Ross Garnaut is currently undertaking a similar analysis. These persons, and many other public commentators and politicians as well, have indicated that they accept that there is a scientific consensus that dangerous, human-caused global warming is occurring, as set by the views and advice of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The IPCC is the United Nations body whose second chairman, John Houghton, wrote in 1994 that ‘unless we announce disasters, no one will listen’. From that point forward, it was obvious that IPCC pronouncements needed to be subjected to independent critical analysis;
****
Science funding has for decades been biased towards efforts that support the AGW hypothesis. The IPCC has selected science that supports its position. Contradictory science has been suppressed or ignored. The notion CO2 as a gas that is harmful to climate in tiny volumes remains devoid of observational support after decades of research by the best minds. That is a powerful indication that there is none to be found. Average temperature increased. A combination of increased input and a planet response is all that is certain. That greenhouse gases do not produce energy is a given. They cannot raise the level of existing energy, merely slow its escape fractionally. IR travels at the speed of light. Allocation of responsibility is the purest of conjecture. STILL.

Footnote. The radiance from the surface does not magically raise the temperature by CO2's increased absorption of it. The very cool IR in CO2's ranges is absorbed statiscally 100% very near the surface, likely 10-20 metres by pre-war levels. More CO2 reduces that height. It doesn't increase the energy.

 

Australian Senator Responded 1
Australian Senator Responded 3

Response to Senator Fielding's questions about the climate change science (PDF - 91 KB)

Subject to update as better information comes to hand. Here is what I have:

Question 1: Is it the case that CO2 increased by 5% since 1998 whilst global temperature cooled over the same period?

Correct answer - yes.

If so, why did the temperature not increase;

Correct answer - reduced cloud due to declining TSI allowed IR transmission to space to increase.

how can human emissions be to blame for dangerous levels of warming?

Correct answer - humans are evil. Their existence is an offence to nature. Warming is nature's way of telling us humans are bad.
Of course the cup can also be viewed half full. CO2 benefits biomass (nature). That means increasing crop yields, expanding healthier forests and it offsets cooling. It insignificantly affects climate, less insignificantly as the climate cools.
Human responsibility for variations in climate by gas emissions cannot be proved even after the best minds with tens of billions in funding over 20 years have done their utmost. It is assumed by some that additional CO2 is significant despite the absence of evidence. This false assumption is the reason for the weakness of models.

When climate change scientists talk about global warming they mean warming of the climate system as a whole, which includes the atmosphere, the oceans, and the cryosphere (ice, snow and frozen ground). (WAFFLE)

The observational evidence clearly indicates that the climate system has continued to warm since 1998. During this period ocean heat content has risen, ice and snow have continued to melt, and (WAFFLE)
there has been no material trend in global air temperatures.

So there has been an immaterial trend down? The AGW alarmism took off with Hansen's projection based on "no material trend" (~10 years' data). No material trend says the air has stopped warming. How can that be? If oceans are still warming (they aren't) and ice extent is still reducing (it isn't) how is air NOT warming? Unknown natural factors? So the alarmism is based on science that is based on unknown factors? Yes. But, solar activity hit bottom and solar irradiance trended down since 2003. But that is only sunlight. And correlation is not causation. But it is significant because CO2 just kept right on increasing.

Air temperatures

When changes in surface air temperature are considered, it is important to note that at time scales of around a decade, natural variability can mask the atmospheric warming trend caused by the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases. For example, global average surface temperatures clearly increased between 1975 and 2008 but some shorter periods, such as 1981-1989, showed no warming.

Thus CO2 is overwhelmed by "other factors". More evidence that CO2 is insignificant. CO2 influence increases with cooling, decreases with warming so it slightly helps reduce the severity of cooling at a cost of an insignificant addition to warming. The smallness of this influence is adequately demonstrated in the range of temperature variation being both large and small even on a year to year basis despite CO2's consistently increasing volume.

Such behaviour is consistent with the outputs of climate models such as those assessed by the IPCC (see below for more details).

Any behaviour is consistent with the combined outputs of climate models. With a span increasingly increasing, e.g. from 0.4 to 0.8°C in 10 years, a large comet collision and a direct hit from a solar flare is likely embraced in a projection to 2200.

Regarding the 1998-2008 period, the year 1998 was unusually warm due to a strong El Nino event. We note that Question 1 uses 1998 as the beginning year for its trend analysis. So, in addition to the period of analysis being too short to detect underlying trends, the use of a highly unusual year to begin the trend analysis will also give misleading results. This is a simple feature of statistics. Furthermore, globally 13 of the 14 warmest years on record have occurred since 1995.

The El Nino warming is balanced by the La Nina cooling (ENSO). It seems strange that this argument is used to dismiss the argument against AGW when the IPCC use of a highly unusual year to begin their trend (~1945) also gives misleading results to justify alarming claims of AGW. However, El Nino events are significant in that their influence demonstrates the overwhelming influence of ocean mood, ENSO being a single aspect. And reinforces the argument that oceans dominate climate variation.

In terms of the climate system as a whole, only about five percent of the warming since 1960 has taken place in the air.

Opinion without evidence.

Ocean heat content

Most of warming since 1960 (about 85 percent) has happened in the oceans.
(remembering the influence of oceans on air demonstrated in 1998.)
Thus, in terms of a single indicator of global warming, change in ocean heat content is the most appropriate.

The change in ocean heat content since 1960 is shown in the figure below. Note the significant warming trend since 1998.

The greater the smoothing factor, the more it conceals. The data before 2002 and after 2003 should be referred to separately. The reason for this is that the change in instrumentation produced a spike in the record. The matter is not yet resolved. When it is, it is very likely there will be no abrupt increase in temperature.
anomalous-spike-in-ocean-heat-content

(Image was added)

An analysis of a 42-year record of change in ocean heat content (from 1962 to 2003) shows that over half of the total increase during that period occurred in the last 10 years of the period (1993-2003). That is, the rate of change of ocean heat content has risen sharply over the past 15 years. So, not only is the heat content of the oceans increasing, it is increasing faster.

"it is increasing faster" dependent on the anomalous spike.
Looking at the trend, oceans cooled to 1970 then warmed. How can oceans cool while CO2 was increasingly increasing? Simple, CO2 is insignificant. Since 2003 TSI went down. Air stopped warming and then in 2006 the oceans (both currently cooling). The ocean lag was likely due to decreasing atmospheric cloud offsetting the TSI reduction. Sunlight is the main cause of evaporation that produces cloud.

(3 images were added)

Ozone (that blocks UV) recovery was noticed in 2006. Likely due to decreasing stratospheric H2O.

The variations in the temperature ranges attest to the insignificance of "greenhouse" gases other than H2O. The absence of a signature in the tropical troposphere is strong supportive evidence of the minimal influence of ALL additional greenhouse gases.
See: GHG sig. no show

The following from: Dr.Weinstein ScD
"The computational models that show that the increasing CO₂ and CH₄ cause most of the present global warming all require that the temperature of the Stratosphere drops while the lower atmosphere and ground heat up. It appears from the above figures that the volcanic activity clearly caused the temperature to spike up in the Stratosphere, and that these spikes were immediately followed by a drop to a new nearly constant level in the temperature. It is clear from the Mauna Loa CO₂ data (www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/) that the input of CO₂ (or CH₄) from the volcanoes, did not significantly increase the background level of this gas, and thus, this cannot be the cause of the drop in the Stratosphere temperature. The ramp up of atmospheric CO₂ also cannot explain the step down then level changes in high altitude temperature. Since the surface temperature rise is supposed to be related to the Stratosphere temperature drop, and since a significant surface rise above the 1940 temperature level did not occur until the early 1980’s, it may be that the combination of the two (or more) volcanoes, along with Solar variability and variations in ocean currents (i.e., PDO) may explain the major causes of recent surface temperature rises to about 2002. In fact, the average Earth temperature stopped rising after 2002, and has been dropping for the last few years!"

As to increasing heat content, Dr. Pielke Snr makes a strong argument against both that and ocean storage of heat. Here. And  William DiPuccio. Here.
It is technical but the zeroes are in plain numbers.

Ice, snow and frozen ground

Since 1998 there has been continued decline in Arctic sea ice, reduction in the area of snow and frozen ground, melting of glaciers and melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. There has also been a small increase in the area of Antarctic sea ice, although it is not known whether the amount of Antarctic sea ice has changed because there are no data on ice thickness.

NASA. Antarctic sea ice extent trended up according to satellite data. Increasing extent is a strong indication of thickening, 1st year ice becoming 2nd year, becoming 3rd year and so on. Thickness is irrelevant to albedo that diminishes oceans' receipt of solar output. 1% per decade increase would equal Arctic sea ice ~10% per decade. Of course it is hard to say whether a 10% increase in Arctic sea ice is significant because ... etcetera.
Earth Observatory

Overall the amount of ice, snow and frozen ground has declined. (Since the Little Ice Age went into retreat.) A small amount of ice or snow melt corresponds to a large amount of heat, since additional (latent) heat must be added to cause the melt itself, even without a temperature rise.

It is commonly asserted that the temperature rise since the mid 1700s has been ~0.5°C per century, What factors driving this increase stopped and allowed CO2 to almost exactly replicate the warming in the years since? I.e. Warming from 1910 (slow CO2 increase) if anything rises faster than warming from 1945 (rapid CO2 increase).

About five percent of the warming since 1960 has been in the form of melting ice, snow and frozen ground. The remaining five percent of the warming since 1960 has gone into the land.
Eureka. It's hiding in the land. Except land doesn't stay warm for long, up to 6 weeks judging by the length of time between summer solstice and the warmest days. But then that is obviously the Sun and we must discount the solar influence.

The basis of the IPCC assessment

The argument presented in Q1 above is not new and has been thoroughly refuted by a very wide range of observations (name a few please) (and surely the following are mere opinions that are) reported in the (incestuously) peer-reviewed scientific literature and summarised in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, which concludes (SPM page 5) that

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level. (emphasis added)

Looking at the "bible like" treatment of the assessments,

Warming of the climate system is unequivocally not due to human emissions, as is evident from total absence of observational evidence. Increases in average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level that have now reversed cannot be caused by human additions to an insignificant climate component whose sum additions cause no climate effect that is detectable.

Climate variation can and has been predicted based on TSI and ENSO variation. (See: here) and climate variation has been linked to the ENSO. (See: here) It can't and has never been predicted using CO2 as a metric.

Climate warming was expected at the rate of ~0.5 deg C as a response to LIA cooling. Last century was typical. This century may have seen the peak after which it is all downhill unless we are particularly fortunate and the climate stabilises. That is unlikely as the destruction of forests continues.

The response to the response continues with Q2.

Australian Senator Responded 2
Australian Senator Responded 3

QUESTION 1.
Is it the case that CO2 increased by 5% since 1998 whilst global temperature cooled over the same period (see Fig. 1)?
If so, why did the temperature not increase; and how can human emissions be to blame for dangerous levels of warming?
QUESTION 2.
Is it the case that the rate and magnitude of warming between 1979 and 1998 (the late 20th century phase of global warming) was not unusual in either rate or magnitude as compared with warmings that have occurred earlier in the Earth's history (Fig. 2a, 2b)?
If the warming was not unusual, why is it perceived to have been caused by human CO2 emissions; and, in any event, why is warming a problem if the Earth has experienced similar warmings in the past?
QUESTION 3.
Is it the case that all GCM computer models projected a steady increase in temperature for the period 1990-2008, whereas in fact there were only 8 years of warming were followed by 10 years of stasis and cooling. (Fig. 3)?
If so, why is it assumed that long-term climate projections by the same models are suitable as a basis for public policy making?

Answers to these questions have been requested of the Australian government's Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, the Chief Scientist, Professor Penny Sackett and Professor Will Steffen. Our government needs answers to them too.

Only a net loss from being owned by the EU

£40 million pounds a day (£14.6 billion pa) gross membership of the EU conglomerate costs us. For what? Who has it made richer? Who is better off because we pretend to be "European"?

Daniel Hannan did a piece a week ago, I think he was overly evasive in his phraseology but the nitty-gritty is the Conservatives want us to continue to hemorrhage cash to a fraud riddled political wind farm:
www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/d...

My personal opinion. Labour is just keeping the seat warm for the next party. If the Conservatives don't guarantee a vote on EU membership, don't vote for them.
All they are offerring at the moment is a vote on the Lisbon treaty.

If you can't bring yourself to show you don't wan't to be ruled by an incompetent  foreign conglomerate via a local sock puppet government ("the Lib/Lab/Con me some more" eurogravy gimme some cartel) by voting for a minor party, show your displeasure by spoiling your ballot.

Annual Costs of EU Membership

The European Union costs us £65 billion (milliard) gross every year.

That's about £1,000 each every year for every man, woman and child in the UK. And it increases every year.

Direct and Indirect Costs of the EU

Estimates of the true cost of the EU are difficult to come by. MPs have called many times for a cost-benefit analysis, to prove or disprove the benefits of membership. Successive Governments, both Labour and Conservative, have refused, on the grounds that the "benefits" are self-evident. In truth they are afraid of what such a study would show. The Bruges Group have finally produced an authoritative study.

(www.brugesgroup.com/CostOfTheEU2008.pdf<...)

The total gross cost to the UK of EU membership in 2008 they estimate at around £65,000,000,000* - including:

• £28 billion for business to comply with EU regulations,
• £17 billion of additional food costs resulting from the Common Agricultural Policy
• £3.3 billion - the value of the catch lost when the Common Fisheries Policy let other countries fish in our territorial waters
• £14.6 billion gross paid into the EU budget and other EU funds.

It gets worse each year. Used better, this sum could transform the UK - increase pensions, recruit more doctors, nurses, teachers and police, build advanced transport systems and start paying off the national debt.  

*Even allowing for the UK rebate, which the EU wants to stop. Sources: Bruges Group report: "How Much Does the EU Cost Britain?", UK Office of National Statistics, British Government Regulatory Impact Assessments, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organisation, OECD, Eurostat, European Commission.

EU Spending in Britain - Does it Benefit Us?

Continues - http://www.democracymovementsurrey.co.uk/news_divided/news.html

Political wind farm?
Wind farms are a political imposition.
Wind farms are double coverage of a job already done better by existing methods.
Wind farms profit the few at the expense and inconvenience of the many.
Most hate them.
They are mostly dysfunctional.
No cost benefit report has been done.
The more of them there are and the more integrated they become the more expensive their product becomes.

CO2 drives warming?????
Temperature cooled - warmed - cooled - warmed - cooling.
CO2 increased - increased - increased - increased - increasing.

Guesstimate of US  temperatures by the USHCN (US Hysterical Historical Climate Network, AGW advocacy org)
Image from http://icecap.us/images/uploads/USHCNvsCO2.jpg

Above is temperatures, all the following are temperature differences from an arbitrary average.

Microwave Sounding Units (satellites)
(comment from http://news-political.com/2009/05/18/the-fatal-flaw-in-msu-temperature-data/
"But something bothered me about the data I was using. MSU data was available for 70.0S to 82.5N. Not only were “temperatures” not being measured everywhere, but they weren’t being measured equally…When you are using tiny temperature changes to campaign for global warming, leaving off 20 degrees of the planet that is cooling is not insignificant.")
Image from http://icecap.us/images/uploads/MSUCO2.JPG

The temperature is not the green spaghetti.

UK's Climate Research Unit (AGW advocacy org) (bunch of old smoothies)
Global - Image from http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/climon/data/themi/g17.htm


GISS (AGW advocacy org) guess. Image from http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/



Buggered if I can see an acceleration driven by CO2. When corrected for the urban heat island bias the temperatures are even less alarming - if that is possible.
(Comment from http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/19/nasa_giss_cockup_catalog/print.html
"In addition, NOAA's adjustment for Urban Heat Island (UHI) over the entire 20th century is an insignificant -0.06°C. Yet papers by McKitrick and Michaels [abstract (http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2007JD008465.shtml) - background (http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/jgr07/M&M.JGR07-background.pdf)] and by LaDochy et al [abstract (http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/cr/v33/n2/p159-169/)] in late 2007 indicate that NASA and NOAA adjustment methods may exaggerate warming trends by a factor of two. ")
Snow in June. Well, if CO2 has any influence it could be inferred that it is helping to stabilise the climate compared to the early part of last century. But its effect is so small....
To really have an effect on local climate stability we need a lot more trees. And a lot less bureaucratic hypocrisy and interference.

To finish, a token from a non AGW advocacy org UAH (University of Alabama) to redress the balance a little.
Image from http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/

It is impossible to correlate warming with CO2. It is impossible to predict temperature using CO2. It is impossible to predict CO2 variation using human emissions.
The end. (I hope).
.... The whitest summer ever seen, dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb
:-)

Congrats to UKIP and anti greens across Europe. Edging the nutters out of the EU "parliament" is one way to get past the madness, but the real answer is for the UK to be outside where we can actually gain some net benefit  from its economic suicidal tendency and susceptibility to fraud, boondoggles and disasters.

A thought for poor PM. Perhaps he could sue the eu for a return of our contributions. Full membership of the political boondoggle can in no way be claimed to have helped our position and in too many ways can be claimed to have worsened it, not least by increasing the speed of our descent into debt.
Change the name of the green tax on jet fuel to landing tax and double it. That would have the knock on benefit of negating the need for a second airport as the jets would opt to land in Ireland or Europe.
Privatise unemployment benefit management.
Privatise or otherwise undo all the green bureaucracy we are needlessly paying for.
Cancel nuclear energy expansion and expand on coal energy with the same proviso as for the Welsh effort.
Gift the wind farms to India or China (buyer collects). Sue the providers for failing to deliver electricity at promised levels.
Do anything to increase domestic gas and oil production.
Basically undo all the damage the Blair legacy has wrought.
Business does not willingly go abroad or fold. Remove the causes.
At least the next government will then have a fighting chance to improve our lot, something this government has woefully failed to do.
Take at least one step to improve life, nationalise road and rail transport, privatisation failed the public. Add balloon travel to the public's portfolio.
Turn hill farming away from cereals and meat, encourage tree crops if a desire to help stabilise the climate is such a burning issue.

My vision is limited by lack of knowledge. Perhaps some of the obviously educated critics and journalists here could offer something more constructive than my weak effort?

[...] Does new research indicate that the likely human effect on climate is less than previously thought?
Given there has been no warming for a decade and cooling now in its 8th year, does this undermine our confidence in computer global models?
What would it cost – in terms of higher prices for goods and slower economic growth to reduce emissions?
Would reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the United States have any effect on global temperatures?

[...] The speakers on the climate showed the models are failing and why (my favorite take-away was Willie Soon’s comment garbage in and gospel out) and the economists painted a very frightening picture of the cap-and tax Waman Markey bill. It is officially called a cap-and –trade to disguise the fact that it is a tax and as Michigan Democrat Dingell noted a “huge tax”. We heard numbers ranging as high as $4,600 per year per family including energy and cost of goods and service that will be forced to rise because of the changes made. Even James Hansen and Ralph Nader oppose cap-and tax as give-aways to special interests without doing any measurable good. At the conference, we heard that the changes even if adopted globally (highly unlikely) would not appreciably reduce carbon emissions nor affect global temperatures in any measurable way.
It would mark the biggest BAILOUT by far. The auto bailout cost 7 billion, the Geitner bailout (so-called stimulus) 787 billion. The Waxman Markey bill will run between $6 and $9.4 trillion and at most produce a cooling of just 0.01ºC.

[...] The alarmists have a $50 Billion advantage over the climate realists with blank checks from huge corporations, environmental groups, activists like George Soros and Maurice Strong and sadly even the government. Most of the groups attending including the C3 charitable organizations such as Icecap struggle with fund raising in this environment.

From "Another Inspiring Heartland Climate Conference" By Joseph D’Aleo
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Another_Successful_Heartland_Climate_Conference.pdf
***

Economist Dr. Gabriel Calzada of King Juan Carlos University in Madrid reviewed the dismal performance of cap-and-trade mandates in Spain, where unemployment has reached a daunting 18 percent, carbon emissions are higher today than before cap-and-trade was installed, and fraud and misrepresentation of emission abatement programs are rampant.

Calzada dismissed claims that such policies have created “green jobs” in the Spanish economy and presented data that showed Spanish businesses have spent billions of dollars on carbon credits and abatement programs, resulting in two jobs being lost in the regular economy or never being created for every one job created in the “green economy.”
***

God save us from green politicians.

In a paper recently published in Geophysical Research Letters, Silverman et al. (2009) created a model of coral calcification based on field observations of gross community calcification as a function of aragonite saturation state (Ωarag), sea surface temperature (SST) and live coral cover, after which they calculated calcification rates for more than 9,000 reef locations using model values of Ωarag and SST at different atmospheric CO2 concentrations, which exercise led them to conclude that "by the time atmospheric partial pressure of CO2 will reach 560 ppm, all coral reefs will cease to grow and start to dissolve."

What's wrong with this picture?

For starters -- and as actually acknowledged by the researchers themselves -- "coral reefs were exposed throughout their geological history to higher temperatures and CO2 levels than at present and yet have persisted," which is a pretty amazing admission for them to make, in light of the fact that they have boldly declared that when the atmosphere's CO2 concentration reaches 560 ppm in the not too distant future, "all coral reefs will cease to grow and start to dissolve."

So how did the five modelers get things so wrong? ... as we clearly believe they did.

For one thing, they say their calculations "are based on the assumption that an increase of 1°C in the maximum summer monthly average SST [relative to pre-Industrial Revolution or PIR values] will result in bleaching that will reduce the live coral cover [of a reef] by 50%." This means that if a reef's live coral coverage parameter (AC, which can vary from 1.0 to 0.0) was initially 0.5, it will decline to 0.25, as they describe it, "when monthly average model SST increases by >=1°C above the temperature of the warmest month during PIR," and that "a further decrease of AC to 0.125 is invoked by the model on the next encounter with >=1°C SST increase," so that the reef's live coral coverage gradually dwindles away to next to nothing over the course of subsequent SST spikes.

Fortunately, real-world corals do not behave in this manner. They almost always recover from bleaching episodes, and they come back even better prepared for the next bleaching, so that equally severe -- or even more severe -- high temperature anomalies often have less of a negative effect on them than prior heat waves had; and this phenomenon enables earth's corals to indefinitely maintain -- and possibly even expand --their undersea structures, which end result is just the opposite of what Silverman et al. assume in their model.

In describing the work of Adjeroud et al. (2002), for example, Adjeroud et al. (2005) reported that an interannual survey of reef communities at Tiahura on the French Polynesian island of Moorea "showed that the mortality of coral colonies following a bleaching event was decreasing with successive events [our italics], even if the latter have the same intensity."

Commenting on these and the similar observations of others, the seven French scientists additionally noted that the "spatial and temporal variability of the impacts observed at several scales during the present and previous surveys may reflect an acclimation and/or adaptation of local populations," such that "coral colonies and/or their endosymbiotic zooxanthellae may be phenotypically and possibly genotypically resistant to bleaching events," citing the work of Rowan et al. (1997), Hoegh-Guldberg (1999), Kinzie et al. (2001) and Coles and Brown (2003) in support of this conclusion.

Still other researchers have also confirmed the phenomenon of thermal adaptation in coral reefs. Guzman and Cortes (2007), for example, studied coral reefs of the eastern Pacific Ocean that had "suffered unprecedented mass mortality at a regional scale as a consequence of the anomalous sea warming during the 1982-1983 El Niño." At Cocos Island, in particular, they found in a survey of three representative reefs (which they conducted in 1987) that the remaining live coral cover was only 3% of what it had been prior to the occurrence of the great 1982-1983 El Niño (Guzman and Cortes, 1992); and based on this finding and the similar observations of other scientists at other reefs, they predicted that "the recovery of the reefs' framework would take centuries, and recovery of live coral cover, decades." Just 15 years later, however, they found that the mean live coral cover had increased nearly five-fold -- from 2.99% in 1987 to 14.87% in 2002 -- at the three sites studied during both periods, while the mean live coral cover of all five sites studied in 2002 was 22.7%. In addition, they found that "most new recruits and adults belonged to the main reef building species from pre-1982 ENSO, Porites lobata, suggesting that a disturbance as outstanding as [the 1982-1983] El Niño was not sufficient to change the role or composition of the dominant species."

The most interesting aspect of the study, however, was the fact that a second major El Niño occurred between the two assessment periods; and Guzman and Cortes state that "the 1997-1998 warming event around Cocos Island was more intense than all previous El Niño events," noting that temperature anomalies "above 2°C lasted 4 months in 1997-1998 compared to 1 month in 1982-83." Nevertheless, they determined that "the coral communities suffered a lower and more selective mortality in 1997-1998 [our italics], as was also observed in other areas of the eastern Pacific (Glynn et al., 2001; Cortes and Jimenez, 2003; Zapata and Vargas-Angel, 2003)," which finding is indicative of a significant thermal adaptation following the 1982-83 El Niño.

One year later, in a paper published in Marine Biology, Maynard et al. (2008) described how they analyzed bleaching severity in three coral genera (Acropora, Pocillopora and Porites) via underwater video surveys of five sites in the central section of Australia's Great Barrier Reef in late February and March of 1998 and 2002, while contemporary sea surface temperatures were acquired from satellite-based Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer data that were calibrated to ship- and drift buoy-obtained measurements, and surface irradiance data were obtained "using an approach modified from that of Pinker and Laszlo (1991)."

With respect to temperature, the four researchers report that "the amount of accumulated thermal stress (as degree heating days) in 2002 was more than double that in 1998 at four of the five sites," and that "average surface irradiance during the 2002 thermal anomaly was 15.6-18.9% higher than during the 1998 anomaly." Nevertheless, they too found that "in 2002, bleaching severity was 30-100% lower than predicted from the relationship between severity and thermal stress in 1998, despite higher solar irradiances during the 2002 thermal event." In addition, they found that the coral genera that were originally most susceptible to thermal stress (Pocillopora and Acropora) "showed the greatest increase in tolerance."

In discussing their findings, Maynard et al. said they were "consistent with previous studies documenting an increase in thermal tolerance between bleaching events (1982-1983 vs. 1997-1998) in the Galapagos Islands (Podesta and Glynn, 2001), the Gulf of Chiriqi, the Gulf of Panama (Glynn et al., 2001), and on Costa Rican reefs (Jimenez et al., 2001)," and they noted that Dunne and Brown (2001) found similar results in the Andaman Sea, in that "bleaching severity was far reduced in 1998 compared to 1995 despite sea-temperature and light conditions being more conducive to widespread bleaching in 1998."

As for the significance of these and other observations, the Australian scientists stated that "the range in bleaching tolerances among corals inhabiting different thermal realms suggests that at least some coral symbioses have the ability to adapt to much higher temperatures than they currently experience in the central Great Barrier Reef," citing the work of Coles and Brown (2003) and Riegl (1999, 2002). In addition, they stated that "even within reefs there is a significant variability in bleaching susceptibility for many species (Edmunds, 1994; Marshall and Baird, 2000), suggesting some potential for a shift in thermal tolerance based on selective mortality (Glynn et al., 2001; Jimenez et al., 2001) and local population growth alone." Hence, they concluded their results suggested "a capacity for acclimatization or adaptation."

In bringing their paper to a close, Maynard et al. wrote "there is emerging evidence of high genetic structure within coral species (Ayre and Hughes, 2004)," which suggests that "the capacity for adaptation could be greater than is currently recognized." In fact, as stated by Skelly et al. (2007), "on the basis of the present knowledge of genetic variation in performance traits and species' capacity for evolutionary response, it can be concluded that evolutionary change will often occur concomitantly with changes in climate as well as other environmental changes [our italics]." Consequently, it can be appreciated that if global warming were to begin again (there has been none over the last decade), it would not spell the end for earth's highly adaptable corals, which observation-based conclusion stands in direct contradiction of one of the key assumptions of Silverman et al.'s calcification model.

Another reality check that can be made on the calcification model of Silverman et al. derives from the fact that the current aragonite saturation state of the global ocean (calculated for an atmospheric CO2 concentration of 380 ppm) and the current array of global sea surface temperatures indicate, when processed by the model, "that most coral reefs are already calcifying 20% to 40% less than their pre-Industrial Revolution rates."

With respect to this conclusion, we first consider the work of Pelejero et al. (2005), who developed a reconstruction of seawater pH spanning the period 1708-1988, based on the boron isotopic composition (δ¹¹B) of a long-lived massive Porites coral from Flinders Reef in the western Coral Sea of the southwestern Pacific. Their results indicated there was "no notable trend toward lower δ¹¹B values" over the 300-year period, which began "well before the start of the Industrial Revolution". Instead, they say "the dominant feature of the coral δ¹¹B record is a clear interdecadal oscillation of pH, with δ¹¹B values ranging between 23 and 25 per mil (7.9 and 8.2 pH units)," which "is synchronous with the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation." Furthermore, they calculated aragonite saturation state values from the Flinders pH record that varied between about 3 and 4.5, which values encompass, in their words, "the lower and upper limits of aragonite saturation state within which corals can survive." Nevertheless, they report that the "skeletal extension and calcification rates for the Flinders Reef coral fall within the normal range for Porites and are not correlated with aragonite saturation state [our italics]." What is more, Liu et al. (2009) recently used a similar approach to reconstruct a pH history of the South China Sea, discovering in the process that some six thousand years ago it was slightly more acidic (actually less basic) than it is now.

In another study of historical calcification rates, which was based upon coral cores retrieved from 35 sites on Australia's Great Barrier Reef, Lough and Barnes (1997) observed a statistically significant correlation between coral calcification rate and local water temperature, such that a 1°C increase in mean annual water temperature increased mean annual coral calcification rate by about 3.5%. Nevertheless, they report there were "declines in calcification in Porites on the Great Barrier Reef over recent decades." They were quick to point out, however, that their data depicted several extended periods of time when coral growth rates were either above or below the long-term mean, cautioning that "it would be unwise to rely on short-term values (say averages over less than 30 years) to assess mean conditions."

As an example of this fact, they report that "a decline in calcification equivalent to the recent decline occurred earlier this [20th] century and much greater declines occurred in the 18th and 19th centuries," long before anthropogenic CO2 emissions had made much of an impact on the air's CO2 concentration. In fact, over the entire length of their data set, Lough and Barnes say "the 20th century has witnessed the second highest period of above average calcification in the past 237 years," which is not exactly what one would expect in light of (1) how high water temperatures are often claimed to be deadly for corals, (2) the climate-alarmist claim that the earth is currently warmer than it has been at any other time during the past thousand years, and (3) the fact that the air's CO2 content is currently much higher than it has been for far longer than a mere millennium.

Similar findings have been reported by Bessat and Buigues (2001), who derived an 1801-1990 history of coral calcification rates based on a core extracted from a massive Porites coral on the French Polynesian island of Moorea. This they did because, as they describe it, "recent coral-growth models highlight the enhanced greenhouse effect on the decrease of calcification rate." And rather than relying on theoretical calculations, they wanted to work with real-world data, stating that the records preserved in ancient corals "may provide information about long-term variability in the performance of coral reefs, allowing unnatural changes to be distinguished from natural variability."

So what did the two researchers learn? First of all, they found that a 1°C increase in water temperature increased coral calcification rate by 4.5%, which led them to state that "instead of a 6-14% decline in calcification over the past 100 years computed by the Kleypas group, the calcification has increased, in accordance with [the findings of] Australian scientists Lough and Barnes." They also observed patterns of "jumps or stages" in the record, which were characterized by an increase in the annual rate of calcification, particularly at the beginning of the past century "and in a more marked way around 1940, 1960 and 1976," stating once again that their results "do not confirm those predicted by the Kleypas et al. (1999) model."

Another major blow to the Kleypas et al. model -- and, by extension, the Silverman et al. model -- was provided by the work of Lough and Barnes (2000), who assembled and analyzed the calcification characteristics of 245 similar-sized massive colonies of Porites corals obtained from 29 sites scattered along the length and breadth of Australia's Great Barrier Reef (GBR), which data spanned a latitudinal range of approximately 9° and an annual average SST range of 25-27°C. To these data they added other published data from the Hawaiian Archipelago (Grigg, 1981, 1997) and Phuket, Thailand (Scoffin et al., 1992), thereby extending the latitudinal range of the expanded data set to 20° and the annual average SST range to 23-29°C.

This analysis revealed that the GBR calcification data were linearly related to the average annual SST data, such that "a 1°C rise in average annual SST increased average annual calcification by 0.39 g cm^-2 year^-1." Results were much the same for the extended data set; and Lough and Barnes reported that "the regression equation [calcification = 0.33(SST) - 7.07] explained 83.6% of the variance in average annual calcification," noting that "this equation provides for a change in calcification rate of 0.33 g cm^-2 year^-1 for each 1°C change in average annual SST."

With respect to the significance of their findings, Lough and Barnes said they "allow assessment of possible impacts of global climate change on coral reef ecosystems," and between the two 50-year periods 1880-1929 and 1930-1979, they calculated an increase in calcification of 0.06 g cm^-2 year^-1, noting that "this increase of ~4% in calcification rate conflicts with the estimated decrease in coral calcification rate of 6-14% over the same time period suggested by Kleypas et al. (1999) as a response to changes in ocean chemistry [our italics]." Even more stunning was their observation that between the two 20-year periods 1903-1922 and 1979-1998, the SST-associated increase in calcification was just under 5% in the northern GBR, about 12% in the central GBR, about 20% in the southern GBR and up to 50% to the south of the GBR.

In light of these real-world observations, and in stark contrast to the doom-and-gloom prognostications of the world's climate alarmists, Lough and Barnes concluded that coral calcification rates "may have already significantly increased along the GBR in response to global climate change."

Because of findings such as those described above, Buddemeier et al. (2004) were forced to acknowledge that "calcification rates of large heads of the massive coral Porites increased rather than decreased over the latter half of the 20th century," further noting that "temperature and calcification rates are correlated, and these corals have so far responded more to increases in water temperature (growing faster through increased metabolism and the increased photosynthetic rates of their zooxanthellae) than to decreases in carbonate ion concentration."

Finally, in a study devoted to corals that involves a much longer period of time than all of the others we have discussed, another research team (Crabbe et al., 2006) determined the original growth rates of long-dead Quaternary corals found in limestone deposits of islands in the Wakatobi Marine National Park of Indonesia, after which they compared them to the growth rates of present-day corals of the same genera living in the same area. This work revealed that the Quaternary corals grew "in a comparable environment to modern reefs," except, of course, for the air's CO2 concentration, which is currently higher than it has been at any other time throughout the entire Quaternary, which spans the past 1.8 million years. Most interestingly, therefore, their measurements indicated that the radial growth rates of the modern corals were 31% greater than those of their ancient predecessors in the case of Porites species, and 34% greater in the case of Favites species.

To these papers we could add many others that also depict increasing rates of coral calcification in the face of rising temperatures and atmospheric CO2 concentrations, including Clausen and Roth (1975), Coles and Jokiel (1977), Kajiwara et al. (1995), Nie et al. (1997), Reynaud-Vaganay et al. (1999), Reynaud et al. (2007) and Lough (2008). Clearly, therefore, the "unprecedented" 20th-century increases in atmospheric CO2 and temperature appear to have not harmed earth's corals. In fact, they actually appear to have helped them, which is a far cry from Silverman et al.'s contention that most coral reefs are currently calcifying at rates that are "20% to 40% less than their pre-Industrial Revolution rates." Just like the incredible shrinking man, earth's incredible dissolving corals are pure science fiction.

Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso

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So it seems China and India aren't dissolving coral.
Above paper from http://www.co2science.org/articles/V12/N21/EDIT.php

An interesting discussion about energy issues took place between Adam McDowell, Lawrence Solomon, Daniel Goldbloom and Morag Carter a few days ago. The discussion ostensibly focused on a forgettable book but what was interesting was that the various pros and cons of energy sources were touched on and the merits and demerits mentioned. Worth the 5 minutes it takes to read as it gives a fair, if potted, overview of the current situation.
http://energy.probeinternational.org/fossil-fuels/oil/lawrence-solomon-debates-jeff-rubins-new-book