Sunday, November 14, 2010

EPA Emissions Guidelines

Texas has rightly refused to revise its permitting rules for power plants and large industrial plants to include CO2 as required by new EPA guidelines. These guidelines are the thin end of the wedge by which the ultra left Obama Administration is attempting to ultimately control essentially all US economic activity by using the UN - IPCC anthropogenic CO2 global warming hypothesis as a means to scare the citizenry into giving up their economic freedom and creating essentially a socialist economy.

There is no evidence or empirical data that anthropogenic CO2 will cause damaging climate change in the foreseeable future. In fact the Hadley Center (UK) Sea Surface Temperature data show that warming peaked in 2003. The earth is now in a natural cooling phase controlled by declining Solar activity for at least the next 30 years.

The EPA policy is based on the 2007 IPCC AR4 Summary for Policy Makers. This was a political document and was written before the Science section of the same report on which it was supposedly founded . Most of the predicted disasters are based on climate models.Even the Modelers themselves say that thy do not make predictions . The models produce projections or scenarios which are no more accurate than the assumptions,algorithms and data , often of poor quality,which were put into them. In reality they are no more than expensive drafting tools to produce power point slides to illustrate the ideas and prejudices of their creators. The IPCC science section AR4 WG1 section 8.6.4 deals with the reliability of the climate models .This IPCC science section on models concludes:

"Moreover it is not yet clear which tests are critical for constraining the future projections,consequently a set of model metrics that might be used to narrow the range of plausible climate change feedbacks and climate sensitivity has yet to be developed"

What could be clearer. The IPCC itself says that we don't even know what metrics to put into the models to test their reliability.- i.e. we don't know what future temperatures will be and we can't yet calculate the climate sensitivity to anthropogenic CO2.This also begs a further question of what mere assumptions went into the "plausible" models to be tested anyway. Nevertheless this statement was ignored by the political hacks who produced the Summary. Here predictions of disaster were illegitimately given "with high confidence." in complete contradiction to several sections of the WG1 science section where uncertainties and error bars were discussed. These doomsday scenarios were then seized upon by the main stream media , talking heads and chattering classes and above all by those Western Politicians who saw them as a wonderful tool for grabbing economic control and central government power for themselves.
The Waxman - Markey bill showed where these ideas would lead. Government climate police disguised as real estate appraisers would decide all real property evaluations based on Federal climate control based rules. The price and mix of all energy and thus all goods and services would be determined by the government to achieve whatever objectives it saw fit. Truly an Orwellian Brave New World.
Britain and Europe are well on the way to creating this nightmare state.The new U.S Congress must strip the EPA administrators of their clearly unconstitutional authority and return such dictatorial powers to the elected reprentatives of the people. Governor Perry and Texas must stand firm for freedom economic liberty and data based science.

Friday, June 18, 2010

Thirty Year Climate Forecast

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The geologic record shows clearly that the sun is the main climate driver. The Milankovitch multi-millennial orbital cycles in NH insolation are firmly established in the record as are the Schwab and deVries cycles. Other millennial and decadal variations in solar activity are present in the record. TSI is not the only or even the best indicator of solar activity – variations in EUV radiation and the GCR flux (via cloud formation and earth’s albedo) seem to be more important on decadal and centennial scales . Earth’s climate is the result of complex resonances between all these solar cycles with the lunar declination cycles and endogenous earth processes.

At this time the sun has entered a quiet phase with a dramatic drop in solar magnetic field strength since 2004. This suggests the likelihood of a cooling phase on earth with Solar Cycles 21, 22 ,23 equivalent to Solar Cycles 2,3,4, and the delayed Cycle 24 comparable with Cycle 5 so that a Dalton type minimum is probable.

It is now clear that the patterns of the earth’s ocean and atmospheric current systems provide the most immediate guide to the current state of the climate when climate is considered as the result of the complex processes discussed above and these systems provide the best clues as to l developments over the next 20 – 30 years. Beyond that time span predictions are currently of little practical value. The small effect of anthropogenic CO2 cannot be calculated with any useful accuracy until we can better quantify the effect of the natural variations.
The IPCC CO2 -anthropogenic warming projections are based on models. AR4 WG1 section 8.6.4 deals with the reliability of the projections.This IPCC science section on models concludes

"Moreover it is not yet clear which tests are critical for constraining the future projections,consequently a set of model metrics that might be used to narrow the range of plausible climate change feedbacks and climate sensitivity has yet to be developed"

What could be clearer. The IPCC itself says that we dont even know what metrics to put into the models to test their reliability.- ie we don't know what future temperatures will be and we can't calculate the climate sensitivity to CO2.This also begs a further question of what mere assumptions went into the "plausible" models to be tested anyway.

Of particular note in climate forecasting is the negative phase of the PDO which began perhaps five years ago and may well last for another 25years. This suggests that La Ninas will be more frequent than El Ninos during this time span. A general earth cooling is thus more likely as was the case from 1940 to 1970 when similar conditions prevailed. Concurrent changes in the Arctic Oscillation suggest a pattern of meridional atmospheric flow will be more common than the more latitudinal flows of warmer periods.

Policymakers may wish to note the following possible effects on earth’s climate for the next 20 – 30 years. A cooler world with lower SSTs usually means a dryer world. Thus droughts will be more likely in for example east Africa with possible monsoon failures in India. In California the PDO will mean less rainfall with more forest fires in the south. However in the Cascades and Northern Sierras snowpack could increase since more of the rain could occur as snow. Northern Hemisphere growing seasons will be shorter with occasional early and late frosts and drought in the US corn belt and in Asia repeats of the harsh Mongolian and Chinese winters of 2009 – 10 . In Europe cold snowy winters and cool cloudy summers will be more frequent .

There will be a steeper temperature gradient from the tropics to the poles so that violent thunderstorms with associated flooding and tornadoes will be more frequent in the USA, At the same time the jet stream will swing more sharply North – South thus local weather in the Northern hemisphere in particular will be generally more variable with occasional more northerly heat waves and more southerly unusually cold snaps. In the USA hurricanes may strike the east coast with greater frequency in summer and storm related blizzards more common in winter.
The southern continents will be generally cooler with more frequent droughts and frost and snowin winter,
Arctic and Antarctic sea ice may react differentially to an average global cooling. We might expect sea ice to increase in the Antarctic but in the NH the Arctic Oscillation while bringing cooler temperatures further south may also occasionaly bring warmer air into the Arctic with possible relative loss of sea ice in that areaduring those years.

The most general advice is that world food production will be subject to occasional serious severe restriction because of cold and drought. The use of food crops for biofuels should be abandoned and stockpiles built up for possible lean times ahead.. Northern cities and transportation systems should prepare for more frequent heavy snow and ice storms.
There is no threat from the burning of fossil fuels for the forseeable future, indeed an increase in CO2 would positively help in feeding the burgeoning population.

For the next 20 years climate science should be devoted to improving and enlarging the entire climate data base in particular with regard to solar data of all kinds. No climate model runs should be made until 2025 by which time the inputs will hopefully be more relevant to the real world.

Monday, June 7, 2010

AR5 - Summary for Policymakers 2012

It is the habit of the IPCC to produce the Summary for Policymakers ahead of the science section of their reports so their scientists can produce the science necessary to fit the policy. Amazingly the 2012 Summary already exists in the minds of the IPCC editors and by channeling that great climate spirit Dr Norpag I was able to obtain the text of this report for the enlightenment of climate scientists in general.


IPCC AR5 – Summary for Policymakers 2012

Our AR4 report included the following statement:
The understanding of anthropogenic warming and cooling influences on climate has improved since the TAR, leading to very high confidence that the global average net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming, with a radiative forcing of +1.6 [+0.6 to +2.4] W m–2 "

We further estimated an increase in temperature of about 3 degrees C. for a doubling of CO2.

We now realize that our knowledge of the factors controlling earth’s climate is much more limited than we previously thought and we are at this time unable to calculate the possible future effect of anthropogenic CO2 with any degree of certainty useful for policymakers. We apologise to those policymakers who embarked upon economically destructive carbon emission control schemes based upon our previous statements and similarly apologise to those members of the western intelligencia who spent sleepless nights worrying about the fate of the planet and their days trying to reduce their carbon footprint.

We can however make some possibly useful comments with suggestions for policymakers .
It is now clear that the patterns of the earths ocean current systems provide the best guide to the current state of the climate and the best clues as to developments over the next 20 – 30 years. Beyond that time span predictions are of little practical value.

Of particular note is the negative phase of the PDO which began about ten years ago and may well last for another 20 years. This suggests that La Ninas will be more frequent than El Ninos during this time span. A general earth cooling is thus more likely as was the case from 1940 to 1970 when similar conditions prevailed. Concurrent changes in the Arctic Oscillation suggest a pattern of meridional atmospheric flow will be more common than the more latitudinal flows of warmer periods.

In addition the sun has entered a quiet phase with a dramatic drop in solar magnetic field strength since 2004. This reinforces the probability of a cooling phase on earth.

Policymakers may wish to note the following possible effects on earths climate for the next 20 – 30 years. A cooler world with lower SSTs usually means a dryer world. Thus droughts will be more likely in for example California, and east Africa with possible monsoon failures in India. Northern Hemisphere growing seasons will be shorter with occasional early and late frosts and repeats of the harsh Central Asia (Mongolia) winters of 2009 – 10 . Cold European winters and cool cloudy summers will be more frequent .

There will be a steeper temperature gradient from the tropics to the poles so that tornadoes will be more violent and more frequent in the USA, At the same time the jet stream will swing more sharply North – South thus local weather world wide will be generally more variable with occasional more northerly heat waves and more southerly unusually cold snaps. In the USA hurricanes may strike the east coast with greater frequency.
Arctic and Antarctic sea ice may react differentially to an average global cooling. We might expect sea ice to increase in the Antarctic but the Arctic Oscillation while bringing cooler temperatures further south may also bring warmer air into the Arctic with possible loss of sea ice in that area.

The most general advice is that world food production may be subject to occasional serious severe restriction because of cold and drought. The use of food crops for biofuels should be abandoned and stockpiles built up for possible lean times ahead. Northern cities and transportation systems should prepare for more frequent heavy snow and ice storms.
There is no threat from the burning of fossil fuels for the forseeable future, indeed an increase in CO2 would positively help in feeding the burgeoning population.

For the next 20 years climate science should be devoted to improving and enlarging the entire climate data base in particular with regard to solar data of all kinds. No climate model runs should be made until 2025 by which time the inputs will be more relevant to the real world.






Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Climate Wars March 2010

The one good thing that the IPCC - Al Gore AGW campaign has done is to draw attention to the importance of Climate Science in attempting to evaluate future threats to the basic problem of feeding the estimated 9 billion expected on earth by mid- century. Unfortunately the science was distorted and "results " hyped to promote the political agenda ,career interests and financial interests of various parties with varying motivations. What can we agree on? I think the following statements represent what we know and how certain we may be about the "facts"
1. The quality of the basic temperature data base is not very good.
2 . In the 20th century temperatures rose from 1900 - 1940. dropped from 1940 - 70 and rose from 1970 to a peak about 2003. There was about 0.8 degrees warming in total.
3. Temperatures have entered a downtrend since then.
4. These general trends are perturbed by El Nino - La Nina and volcanic events
5. CO2 rose steadily during this period but the CO2 trend is not correlative with the temperature trend.
6. Ice core data shows that CO2 follows temperature not vice versa.
7. CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
8. Anthropogenic CO2 has contributed some ,probably small, amount to 20th century warming.
9.Until we know the forcings and feedbacks of the natural system we can't calculate with any accuracy the contribution of anthropogenic CO2 to the temperature.
10.In any event the temperature - CO2 equation is logarithmic so that any future increase in emitted CO2 has progressivley smaller effect.
11. Warm periods with higher CO2 are good for mankind and food production in general.
12. Abundant geologic data and gelogic history show very clearly that the sun is the main climate driver.
13 Our investigation of the Sun - climate system is really only just starting but Milankovich orbital cycles are well documented as are solar activity cycles of various lengths which interact with each other in complex ways.
14. Total Solar Irradiance is only one measure if solar activity . The Svensmark solar magnetism - GCR - cloud cover hypothesis is supported by a lot of evidence and is probably true.
15.Based on current solar activity and the current negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscilation we are more likely than not to have 20 - 30 years of cooling with maybe a Dalton or even a Maunder minimum. Solar magnetic field strength has dropped precipitously over the last 5 years .
16. One or two degrees of cooling might well produce occasional serious crop failures in the worlds chief growing areas. This would be much more dangerous to the population than a warmer world with more CO2.
17. Government efforts would be better directed towards preparing for cooling rather than warming. eg building grain and cattlefeed stockpiles.
18. The IPCC Summary for Policy makers should be abandoned as a guide to future climate trends because our knowledge is insufficient to predict temperatures 100 years out with any accuracy at all.. This is the scientific conclusion of the IPCC itself . The WG1 ( science) section on climate forcings and climate sensitvity concludes (8.6.4)

"Moreover it is not yet clear which tests are critical for constraining the future projections,consequently a set of model metrics that might be used to narrow the range of plausible climate change feedbacks and climate sensitivity has yet to be developed"

What could be clearer. The IPCC says that we dont even know what metrics to put into the models to test their reliability.- ie we don't know what future temperatures will be and we can't calculate the climate sensitivity to CO2 with any certainty.This also begs a further question of what mere assumptions went into the "plausible" models to be tested anyway.Nobody ever seems to read or quote the AR4 - WG1 report- certainly not the compiler of the Summary or the AGW faithful.
19. The chief threat to the environment and humanity is the expected population increase.
20. The best way to control that is to increase as quickly as possible living standards throughout the world and at the same time raise the status and education of women.This latter will also require changing cultural behaviour in large groups of populations.
21. The world needs to get energy to the developing world as cheaply and as quickly as possible.Fossil fuels are the cheapest energy source for the forseeable future and should be extracted and used in as environmentally friendly way as possible while remembering that CO2 is an effecint fertiliser and not a pollutant and does not need to be controlled.

Friday, February 12, 2010

IPCC Scientific Malfeasance.

The entire IPCC evaluation process is flawed to the point of fraudulence. The Summary for Policymakers was finalised and published before the WG1 (Science) section. The editors of the latter were under implicit pressure and in some cases ,I believe explicit instructions to make the latter fit the former instead of the other way around as should have been the case.Where this was not done the conclusions of WG1 were simply ignored by the editors of the Summary. The most egregious case goes to the heart of and in fact destroys the entire AGW paradigm. The key part of the science is in section WG1 8.6 which deals with forcings, feedbacks and climate sensitivity. The conclusions are in section 8.6.4 which deals with the reliability of the projections.It concludes:
"Moreover it is not yet clear which tests are critical for constraining the future projections,consequently a set of model metrics that might be used to narrow the range of plausible climate change feedbacks and climate sensitivity has yet to be developed"
What could be clearer. The IPCC says that we dont even know what metrics to put into the models to test their reliability.- ie we don't know what future temperatures will be and we can't calculate the climate sensitivity to CO2.This also begs a further question of what mere assumptions went into the "plausible" models to be tested anyway.
Nobody ever seems to read or quote the WG1 report- certainly not the compiler of the Summary. In spite of the WG1 8.6.4. conclusion the Summary says:
"The understanding of anthropogenic warming and cooling influences on climate has improved sincethe TAR, leading to very high confidence that the global average net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming, with a radiative forcing of +1.6 [+0.6 to +2.4] W m–2 "
This statement is fraudulent on its face when compared to 8.6.4.
Those of us interested in objective science should try to see that the 8.6.4 conclusion gets as much exposure as possible. It deserves to be on the front page of the NY Times, The Guardian quoted by the BBC and read into the Congressional record in the USA.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Pachauri E-Mail exchange

Pachauri E-Mail Exchange

The following exchange took place in April and May 2008. At that time Pachauri seemed quite objective and rational.
I never heard any more back from him re his research into the points I raised. I assume he found no actions were warranted.


Dr Pachauri
It is a month since my first e-mail and I thought I might draw your attention to a few more articles of interest.It is clear that temperatures correlate much better with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation ( Controlled by solar activity) than with CO2 levels. Google - PDO cooling -and look at Easterbrooks graphs and comments.. Also google - Jason satellite cooling - for a discussion of the current situation.
Google -- ball UN structures - for an anlysis of how the IPCC came to distort the science for political ends. You are obviously in a better position to judge Ball's position than I am ,but what he says looks very plausible to me.
In the meantime Solar Cycle 24 continues to fail to appear making the cooling predictions more and more likely.
I do hope you will soon feel that you can speak out publicly on these matters in the near future to perhaps forestall damaging actioThank you for your careful consideration of my original e - mail.A useful discussion of the IPCC forcing and feedback factors can be found by googling - pielke monckton guest -
Best Regards Norman Page



----- Original Message -----
From: R K Pachauri
To: Norman Page
Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2008 7:01 AM
Subject: Re: IPCC - Global Warming
Dear Dr. Page, I have gone through your email of 21/04/2008 in considerable detail and I have also done some background research on the issues that you have raised. At this stage I would like to acknowledge your message, and will see what actions are warranted as a follow up. With kind regards, Yours sincerely, R K Pachauri ***************************************************************R K Pachauri, Ph.DDirector-General, TERIHabitat Place, Lodhi RoadNew Delhi 110 003Tel: +91 11 24682121 or 2122Fax: +91 11 24682144 or 2145www.teriin.org***************************************************************


"Norman Page"
21/04/2008 02:45 AM
To

cc
Subject
IPCC - Global Warming
Dear Dr. Pachauri We are seeing the damage done to world food production and food prices by the ill considered rush by Western governments to use biofuels. These same governments,basing their policies on the IPCC climate projections, are rushing towards a similarly ill conceived policy of cappng carbon emissions. I implore you to consider the following points as a matter of urgency. 1. Sea surface temperatures have been dropping since 2003 contrary to IPCC projections. 2. Data from Britain's Hadley centre Climate Research Unit show that for the first quarter of 2008 SSTs were cooler on average than for any yearly average post 1996. 3 Since 1996 CO2 levels have risen 6%. - there is therefore little connection between anthropogenic CO2 and temperature. 4. In any event Spencer (2008) ( google -Spencer Heartland conference - then scroll down to his presentation on the last day) has shown conclusively that the IPCC temperature - CO2 sensitivities are grossly overstated because they used positive instead of negative feedback factors for some of their parameters. 5.All the above shows that there is little threat from warming over the next century. However the situation is worse than just over-estimating CO2 forcing. 6. Solar studies suggest the real possibility of a Dalton type minumum in solar activity developing until about 2040. ( See Charvatova 2000 Ann. Geophysicae). If this in fact occurs, global food production will be reduced because of short growing seasons and early and late frosts. 7. Furthermore if SSTs continue to fall the oceans will cool and absorb more CO2 and CO2 levels will fall. 8. A useful portion - 15 - 20% ? of the increased crop yields during the 20th century was due simply to the increase in CO2 which is the essential plant food not a pollutant. 9. Therefore, if the cooling scenario develops, in order to mitigate hunger , Governments should be encouraging CO2 emissions not trying to reduce them. I believe as a public service and to preserve your scientific and personal integrity you should publically announce that in the light of the actual global temperature trends you are calling for an immediate re-evaluation of the IPCC climate projections to be completed within 6 months by independent and IPCC scientists and that all carbon cap schemes should be put on hold until the results of that evaluation are announced. Another three - five years of data will probably be enough to stablish whether a long term cooling trend will occur. Meanwhile each month that goes by without Solar Cycle 24 starting up makes such a cooling event more likely. I will be happy to discus this all with you and provide you with the pertinent literature or web references. with Best Regards Dr Norman Page Houston USA phone 713 467 8709 normanpage@comcast.net
Best Regards Dr Norman Page.