[j.love]

Finally this story is starting to really break.
The IPCC Is a total crock!

The Washington Times

Climate panel on the hot seat

By H. Sterling Burnett
March 14, 2008

More than 20 years ago, climate scientists began to raise alarms over the possibility global temperatures were rising due to human activities, such as deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels.

To better understand this potential threat, the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 to provide a "comprehensive, objective, scientific, technical and socioeconomic assessment of human-caused climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation."

IPCC reports have predicted average world temperatures will increase dramatically, leading to the spread of tropical diseases, severe drought, the rapid melting of the world's glaciers and ice caps, and rising sea levels. However, several assessments of the IPCC's work have shown the techniques and methods used to derive its climate predictions are fundamentally flawed.

In a 2001 report, the IPCC published an image commonly referred to as the "hockey stick." This graph showed relatively stable temperatures from A.D. 1000 to 1900, with temperatures rising steeply from 1900 to 2000. The IPCC and public figures, such as former Vice President Al Gore, have used the hockey stick to support the conclusion that human energy use over the last 100 years has caused unprecedented rise global warming.

However, several studies cast doubt on the accuracy of the hockey stick, and in 2006 Congress requested an independent analysis of it. A panel of statisticians chaired by Edward J. Wegman, of George Mason University, found significant problems with the methods of statistical analysis used by the researchers and with the IPCC's peer review process. For example, the researchers who created the hockey stick used the wrong time scale to establish the mean temperature to compare with recorded temperatures of the last century. Because the mean temperature was low, the recent temperature rise seemed unusual and dramatic. This error was not discovered in part because statisticians were never consulted.

click for the rest of the story!


Weather Channel Founder: Sue Al Gore for Fraud

I sure hope that Al Gore goes down in flames, and is then brought up on charges of fraud!

The founder of the Weather Channel wants to sue Al Gore for fraud, hoping a legal debate will settle the global-warming debate once and for all.

John Coleman, who founded the cable network in 1982, suggests suing for fraud proponents of global warming, including Al Gore, and companies that sell carbon credits.

"Is he committing financial fraud? That is the question," Coleman said.

"Since we can't get a debate, I thought perhaps if we had a legal challenge and went into a court of law, where it was our scientists and their scientists, and all the legal proceedings with the discovery and all their documents from both sides and scientific testimony from both sides, we could finally get a good solid debate on the issue," Coleman said. "I'm confident that the advocates of 'no significant effect from carbon dioxide' would win the case."

[jb4]

let me get this out of the way: A.G is a ******bag, and is certainly not worthy of being a Nobel Laureate. his concept of 'carbon credits' while flying on jet planes and having 4000+ sq ft temp controlled houses are absolutely a real farce.

this is in regards to their 2001 report - not the one Al-baby is behind. But you mean they used scales that emphazied their points?! Oh Noes, unbelievable?!

notice that Mr Wegman doesn't state that the IPCC conclusions are wrong, just that their methodologies are suspect...

We were not asked to assess the reality of global warming and indeed this is not an area of our expertise. We do not assume any position with respect to global warming except to note in our report that the instrumented record of global average temperature has risen since 1850 according to the MBH 99 chart by about 1.2º centigrade.

http://energycommerce.house.gov/reparchives/108/Hearings/07192006hearing1987/Wegman.pdf

[Prot]

This is great. I had read about the top article some time ago and numerous others like it.

[Dr. Righteous]

WOW, mainstream coverage of the Global warming farce!! Finally!!!!

[sparkchaser]

The whole premise that we can accurately predict climate trends is completely and utterly ridiculous.

Meteorologists can't reliably forecast 72 hours ahead so how can any speculation be made on trends 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, or 100 years from now. There are too many variables, most of which we have idea even exist.

[jb4]

Originally Posted by sparkchaser

The whole premise that we can accurately predict climate trends is completely and utterly ridiculous.

Meteorologists can't reliably forecast 72 hours ahead so how can any speculation be made on trends 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, or 100 years from now. There are too many variables, most of which we have idea even exist.

because they can look back thousands of years?

and "meteorologists" that you see on TV are more actors than scientists...

[sparkchaser]

Sure you can look back thousands of years (only 6,000 if you're a creationist though) but past performance is no indicator of future performance and it leaves out several important factors number one of which is man and his impact, or lack of impact, on the environment. We also don't have any data on solar activity.

[jb4]

well I wasn't about to say 10's of thousands of years for just that exact argument as it takes away from the real issue.

but as they look back they can look at every heat/cool cycle that has already happened, noted those temperatures and compared them to what has happend in the past century, as an example. the rise in average temperature is occuring at a faster rate than it has ever in the past.

there are billions invested into computer models that can acurately predict physics and fluid dynamics why is it so hard to believe that the same can be done for Anthropogenic climate change?

[ccrane2299]

Several years ago, the Discovery Channel dug up a frozen mammoth that had been exposed due to "global warming". Are we to assume that mammoths were great ice burrowers or that he died on the ground and was covered in ice during a natural cooling period. Or, maybe the SUV's of the dinosaur period had it real warm then too.

[JG_Canuck]

Originally Posted by sparkchaser

We also don't have any data on solar activity.

Sure we do, and global temperature correlates very closely to solar activity.

Forget Global Warming... Welcome to the new Ice Age

Last month, Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, shrugged off manmade climate change as "a drop in the bucket." Showing that solar activity has entered an inactive phase, Prof. Sorokhtin advised people to "stock up on fur coats."

He is not alone. Kenneth Tapping of our own National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun, is convinced we are in for a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon.

The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850. Crops failed through killer frosts and drought. Famine, plague and war were widespread. Harbours froze, so did rivers, and trade ceased.

[zombieCat]

Originally Posted by jb4

..but as they look back they can look at every heat/cool cycle that has already happened, noted those temperatures and compared them to what has happend in the past century, as an example. the rise in average temperature is occuring at a faster rate than it has ever in the past.

Huh? If we've only been recording temperatures for about a century, how can every heat/cool cycle be compared to the last century? And how could you possibly know that temperatures are rising faster than they ever have? The data does not exist to make such a case. Even if it did, if you're going to assert that the rate of temperature change is the measuring stick, then you should REALLY be worried about global cooling, as this winter has reversed pretty much all of the global warming that's occurred in the last century. That's a century's worth of "fast" warming negated in a single year. Why aren't we hearing you say that the sky is falling because of THIS?

[ColoradoTJ]

So what if global warming is a farce (it's not but for the sake of argument I'll pretend)? What does that mean to you as an individual? You can continue on in your wasteful ways in bliss knowing you're causing no harm to the planet?

[BLS33]

Originally Posted by ColoradoTJ

You can continue on in your wasteful ways in bliss knowing you're causing no harm to the planet?

I will do that either way.

[jb4]

Originally Posted by zombieCat

Huh? If we've only been recording temperatures for about a century, how can every heat/cool cycle be compared to the last century? And how could you possibly know that temperatures are rising faster than they ever have? The data does not exist to make such a case. Even if it did, if you're going to assert that the rate of temperature change is the measuring stick, then you should REALLY be worried about global cooling, as this winter has reversed pretty much all of the global warming that's occurred in the last century. That's a century's worth of "fast" warming negated in a single year. Why aren't we hearing you say that the sky is falling because of THIS?

firstly - my posts are in regards to global climate change, you know, warm and cold cycles, not "global warming" both in extremes (and extremes are measured in singular degrees) are detremental to the existence of life on the planet.

secondly the data does exist.

An ice core is a core sample from the accumulation of snow and ice over many years that have re-crystallized and have trapped air bubbles from previous time periods. The composition of these ice cores, especially the presence of hydrogen and oxygen isotopes, provides a picture of the climate at the time.

Because water molecules containing heavier isotopes exhibit a lower vapor pressure, when the temperature falls, the heavier water molecules will condense faster than the normal water molecules. The relative concentrations of the heavier isotopes in the condensate indicate the temperature of condensation at the time, allowing for ice cores to be used in local temperature reconstruction after certain assumptions. In addition to the isotope concentration, the air bubbles trapped in the ice cores allow for measurement of the atmospheric concentrations of trace gases, including greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide.

Ice cores contain an abundance of climate information. Inclusions in the snow of each year remain in the ice, such as wind-blown dust, ash, bubbles of atmospheric gas and radioactive substances. The variety of climatic proxies is greater than in any other natural recorder of climate, such as tree rings or sediment layers. These include (proxies for) temperature, ocean volume, precipitation, chemistry and gas composition of the lower atmosphere, volcanic eruptions, solar variability, sea-surface productivity, desert extent and forest fires.

Typical ice cores are removed from an ice sheet, most commonly from the polar ice caps of Antarctica, Greenland or from high mountain glaciers elsewhere. As the ice forms from the incremental buildup of annual layers of snow, lower layers are older than upper, and an ice core contains ice formed over a range of years. The properties of the ice or inclusions within the ice can then be used to reconstruct a climatic record over the age range of the core.

The length of the record depends on the depth of the ice core and varies from a few years up to 800 kyr for the EPICA core. The time resolution (i.e. the shortest time period which can be accurately distinguished) depends on the amount of annual snowfall, and reduces with depth as the ice compacts under the weight of layers accumulating on top of it. Upper layers of ice in a core correspond to a single year or sometimes a single season. Deeper into the ice the layers thin and annual layers become indistinguishable.

and just FYI -> "kyr" == the unit of one thousand years

so one ice core sample can give accurate temperature data for up to 800,000 years

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_core

and in regards to the temp change negating previous discoveries

“The current downturn is not very unusual,” said Carl Mears, a scientist at Remote Sensing Systems, a private research group in Santa Rosa, Calif., that has been using satellite data to track global temperature and whose findings have been held out as reliable by a variety of climate experts. He pointed to similar drops in 1988, 1991-92, and 1998, but with a long-term warming trend clear nonetheless.

“Temperatures are very likely to recover after the La Niña event is over,” he said.
.....

Michael E. Schlesinger, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, said that any focus on the last few months or years as evidence undermining the established theory that accumulating greenhouse gases are making the world warmer was, at best, a waste of time and, at worst, a harmful distraction.

Discerning a human influence on climate, he said, “involves finding a signal in a noisy background.” He added, “The only way to do this within our noisy climate system is to average over a sufficient number of years that the noise is greatly diminished, thereby revealing the signal. This means that one cannot look at any single year and know whether what one is seeing is the signal or the noise or both the signal and the noise.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/science/02cold.html?_r=2&th=&oref=slogin&emc=th&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

[zombieCat]

Ooh, good stuff. I'll be back after I get a chance to go through it.