My Photo

Google

news24seven.tv

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.TV

Kiwiblog

New Zealand Conservative

InvestigatePodcast

AmCam News Tips

  • Have you got mobile camera pix of breaking news, or a first-hand account you've written?
    email Investigate now on publicity [at] investigatemagazine.com and we'll get you online
Blog powered by TypePad

"Something fundamentally wrong" with CO2 theories - new study

Study shakes foundation of climate theory! Reveals UN models 'fundamentally wrong with the way temps and carbon linked' -- Blames 'Unknown Processes,' not CO2 for ancient global warming!  

'Global warming: Our best guess is likely wrong'

Tuesday, July 14, 2009By Marc Morano  –  Climate Depot

A new peer-reviewed study may shake the foundation upon which man-made global warming fears are based. The new study discovered "something fundamentally wrong with the way temperature and carbon are linked in climate models."

The study, which was published on July 14, 2009 in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Geoscience, found CO2 was not to blame for a major ancient global warming period and instead found “unknown processes accounted for much of warming in the ancient hot spell.” The press release for the study was headlined: "Global warming: Our best guess is likely wrong."

"In a nutshell, theoretical models cannot explain what we observe in the geological record," said oceanographer Gerald Dickens, a co-author of the study and professor of Earth science at Rice University. "There appears to be something fundamentally wrong with the way temperature and carbon are linked in climate models."

 

Read more

 

Get last week's #5 bestselling climate change book on Amazon US and UK:

 

Airconad2

Air Con: the inconvenient documentary

Forget Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, now Ian Wishart's Air Con is a documentary

I did warn you of this in Air Con...

Gareth Renowden at Hot Topic and others on the Left were deeply skeptical about suggestions in Air Con that "climate change" is being used as a stalking horse to heavily beef up the powers and funding of the United Nations into a defacto world government.

"Conspiracy theory", they parroted as one.

Well, as I have pointed out previously there was nothing "theory" about it - the book lays out the UN's own documents chapter and verse that detail some of the planning for a "new world order" (its own words), including plans for international taxes imposed under the necessity of combating climate change.

So lo, and behold, now here's some text from a report recently written by President Obama's go-to guy Joseph Stiglitz, and published on the UN website:

"Some of the initiatives that have been proposed encompass 'solidarity levies' or, more generally, taxation for global objectives. Some countries have already decreed solidarity levies on airline tickets but there is a larger set of proposals. There have also been suggestions to auction global natural resources-such as ocean fishing rights and pollution emission permits-for global environmental programs.

"The suggestion of taxes that could be earmarked for global objectives has a long history. To avert their being perceived as encroachments on participating countries' fiscal sovereignty, it has been agreed that these taxes should be nationally imposed, but internationally coordinated."

Which, as Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid notes, is simply code for the United Nations taking over ultimate control of these new taxes, but allowing the public to think they are national in origin, rather than world governance-related.

An extract of Air Con's Chapter 16 is available where you can see some of the UN agenda in black and white... 

I'd ask Hot Topic's Trufflehunter to explain his claim that the UN is not gearing up to become a de-facto world government on the back of climate change, but unfortunately Gareth has told his commenters that the subject is officially "off topic".

Stick to farming truffles, Gareth, because now you've proven yourself ignorant on geopolitics AS WELL as climate...

Meanwhile, it seems the Arctic is not melting as much this year. While the NSIDC data has shown increased melt, it's also true that the satellite supplying NSIDC is becoming increasingly unreliable.

Instead, latest Scandinavian data from different satellites shows 2009 is not heading towards the 07 or 08 baselines:

Ssmi_ice_ext_small 

Adding to the gloomy picture for the Chicken Littles over at Hot Topic is the fact that temperatures across the Arctic are still below zero one month into the northern summer - which is unusual and indicative that ice will melt slower while freezing air temperatures persist. One station is reporting the coldest June in 150 years.

Air Con goes global

By way of an advisory to international customers, the book Air Con: The Seriously Inconvenient Truth About Global Warming by Ian Wishart will be available from regular bookshops in Britain, Europe and the US/Canada from the end of next week (June 26).

If the bookstore is not holding stock they will be able to obtain it within 24 to 48 hours from Ingram Distribution, simply provide the store with the title, author, imprint (Howling At The Moon Publishing Ltd) and ISBN number (9780 958240147).

The books are not being supplied from New Zealand and hence there will be no long waiting times - they are being printed locally in the US and UK.


Will someone tell the Arctic it is supposed to be melting now?

With temperatures in the Arctic remaining cool, it looks as though the ice is continuing to recover from its 2007 lows.

This one will get up Trufflehunter's nose and his repeated claims of "faster melt than ever", but so be it: the latest snow and ice official data shows Arctic sea ice extent for much of April and May has actually exceeded the average, contrary to what alarmists like the Hot Topic bloggers have been braying.

The dark red line measures the actual ice extent against the average (black), whilst the light pink line reflects where faulty sensors had been underestimating Arctic sea ice extent until the fault was discovered. The purple line is 2007 and the blue is 2008.

Ddw82wws_282ffw8ssgr_b

Meanwhile, this comment on the WattsUpWithThat blog appears to nail stakes through the cold little hearts of the alarmists:

Steven Goddard

There isn’t any indication that the ice is “breaking up” in an unusual fashion.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_daily_extent.png

Temperatures in the Arctic have been running below normal.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php

Hudson Bay is still almost completely frozen over. I’m sure the Polar Bears are just fine. A shipper would have to be a complete idiot to try to get through the ice, which is ranging from 1.5 metres to 5 metres thick.
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/newdata.htm

Public transport not very green

A new survey of various modes of transport has found a jumbo jet has less environmental impact per mile than an electric commuter train.

One of the most inefficient modes of transport is an off-peak bus.

The great public transport myth is only great if the service is packed and it offers no off peak services at all. Which, of course, defeats the purpose of public transport. Once you add in all the inefficient off-peak runs during the day and evening, the net pollution footprint of public transport far exceeds using the family SUV when you need to.

Go figure.

Richard Worth resigns

STATEMENT FROM DR RICHARD WORTH

 

 

“It is with deep regret that I have resigned my role as a Minister.

 

“I am resigning from the role for personal reasons.

 

“I tendered my resignation to the Prime Minister last night and he accepted.

 

“It has been a privilege to have been a Minister in this Government.

 

“I will not be making any further comment to the media.

 

I have been granted two weeks’ leave of absence from the House.”

 

Hot Topic author a sucker for punishment

Hot Topic's "Trufflehunter" Gareth Renowden is showing strong signs he's a closet masochist, by continuing to stridently assert on left-wing blogs that his original review of Air Con was factually sound.

I crafted a response that turns out to be too long for the comments section at Tumeke, so it's here as a fresh post:


Gareth, your Asian brothels quote was taken utterly out of context, and the spin you put on it was crap. You know it, I know it. As I showed, both in the book and my response to you, I was quoting Green activists. You lied in your review, and I clearly established that.

Item 2, your buffoonery over Milankovich cycles. Again, you quoted me out of context, deliberately. The paragraph from page 86 of Air Con you highlighted came at the end of a series of citations from Stott et al and Caillon et al.

Rather than deal with the scientific papers, you throw to a blogsite similar to yours, then come up with this:

“In how many ways is Wishart’s speculation wrong? He clearly doesn’t understand how the climate warms out of an ice age — orbital changes trigger ice sheet melt in the northern hemisphere, which creates an albedo change as white snow and ice is replaced by dark vegetation, reinforcing the warming.”

Newsflash Gareth, you have been overly simplistic here as orbital changes are not the only factor that governs warm and cool periods. More to the point, if Bomber and your other devoted followers actually read the link you helpfully provided in your 'review' (http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm ), they’ll find it bears little resemblance to your explanation of the sequence of events.

What was it you said I didn’t understand? That’s right, you claim that orbital changes trigger ice sheet melt in the <i>northern</i> hemisphere, which creates an albedo change and allows dark vegetation to grow.

What does your reference link actually say:

“It begins with the high <i>southern</i> latitudes (eg - Antarctica) warming and releasing CO2 from the oceans. The CO2 mixes through the atmosphere, amplifying and spreading the warming to northern latitudes (Cuffey 2001). This is why warming in the southern hemisphere precedes warming in the northern hemisphere (Caillon 2003). This is confirmed by marine cores that show tropical temperatures lag southern warming by ~1000 years (Stott 2007).”

Not only does your link quote the same papers I did in Air Con, it also, helpfully, says the same things I wrote in Air Con, such as this in my words from page 85:

“Again, in simple terms, Antarctica warmed up, slowly releasing CO2 trapped in the ice and nearby ocean, and that extra CO2 didn’t reach significant levels for around 800 years. The warming cycle, perhaps then aided by CO2, then helped trigger melt in the Northern Hemisphere.”

Bomber, I sure as hell hope you are taking notes here, because your local hero is taking a pasting. “In how many ways is Wishart’s speculation wrong? He clearly doesn’t understand how the climate warms out of an ice age”, opined Trufflehunter.

Yeah, right. There have been three explanations given. Two of them, from SkepticalScience and Air Con, agree that warming begins in Antarctica and precedes CO2 release by 800 or so years, eventually affecting the northern hemisphere. The third explanation, provided by Truffle, says warming begins in the Northern Hemisphere.

The real hoot is that while Truffle references SkepticalScience, I wonder if he actually understands it at all. Because here’s how Gareth continued his bizarre explanation:

“Eventually there’s enough extra heat to warm the oceans and start CO2 outgassing. In other words, the oceans are not responding to heat somehow stored from an earlier period — they respond to heat as it arrives.”

OK, once again from the reference link Gareth himself provided:

“The eccentricity cycle causes changes in insolation (incoming sunlight). When springtime insolation increases in the southern hemisphere, this coincides with rising temperatures in the south, retreating Antarctic sea ice and melting glaciers in the southern hemisphere (Shemesh 2002). As temperature rises, CO2 also rises but lags the warming by 800 to 1000 years (Monnin 2001, Caillon 2003, Stott 2007).”

Anyone with half a brain want to reconcile Gareth’s claim with what’s written in his own source link? Gareth, you and Bomber remind me of Enron: the smartest guys in the room. Not.

And just in case you want to try and gloss over your embarrassing errors here, I’ll quote some more from SkepticalScience:

“How does warming cause a rise in atmospheric CO2? As the oceans warm, the solubility of CO2 in water falls (Martin 2005). This causes the oceans to give up more CO2, emitting it into the atmosphere. The exact mechanism of how the deep ocean gives up its CO2 is not fully understood but believed to be related to vertical ocean mixing (Toggweiler 1999).”

We are not totally sure how the CO2 finds its way back up from the deep, but find its way up it does.

But Gareth isn’t finished with his high school rendition of global warming theory:

“If the Earth had been as warm as Wishart believes during the Medieval Warm Period (warmer than today, he repeatedly asserts), then the oceans would have emitted CO2 then, and an amplified warming would have taken place. Instead, the MWP was followed by a Little Ice Age.”

Actually, according to the studies your own link referenced, upwelling CO2 from the deep would follow about 800 years after the MWP which is, what, about a century ago?

Regardless, follow the logic for a moment, Gareth, if you can. On your simplistic understanding of greenhouse theory every warm period should turn into runaway global warming. Another newsflash, it hasn’t.

Moberg (2005), Esper (2002) and even Briffa (2000)  have all produced data indicating the MWP was as warm as or warmer than Earth currently is. (Graphs reprinted in photo insert, Air Con). It isn’t lil old me making a bald assertion. I’m quoting peer reviewed studies, what are you quoting? Michael Mann? Don’t make me laugh.

If it was that hot, as you yourself acknowledge, CO2 must have been released. Why don’t we see it in the records? I’ll come to that in a second.

You have used the warming out of the great ice ages as proof of CO2 release and amplified warming, so you have admitted the greenhouse effect has definitely been in play in the past. Why did the Earth not collapse in a heatwave of unstoppable global warming at that stage, then? (particularly when you claim the heat of the MWP should have resulted in one)

Don’t worry, it’s a rhetorical question. Because Earth has mechanisms that allow it to deal with both rising heat and rising CO2. One of the most obvious of these is forestation. Plants grow rapidly and absorb the extra CO2 rapidly. Crisis averted, life continues none the wiser.

And all of these devastatingly embarrassing gaffes were made by you in your first “Something Stupid” review of Air Con.

Look, I could go on all week pulling your various reviews and your parliamentary submissions to shreds, but I think the above is just a taste for those readers here who still think you dealt to Air Con. You didn’t even get close. As I’ve shown, your understanding of how Earth warms out of ice ages is in sharp contrast to the very website you referenced, which ironically supports my understanding, not yours.

If I want the best ruffle recipes, I’ll be sure to buy your book. But on global warming you’re not that hot. Sure, you’ve got a happy little choir here and at the Standard to preach to, but most of them wouldn’t have a clue that you are wrong, and most of them (not having read Air Con or any other skeptic book) will blithely continue in their blissful ignorance.

As for your “wager”, purportedly based on page 208 of Air Con, again you misrepresent and misquote me.

You say: "You think the planet is going to cool (Air Con p208). I am willing to bet $100 (for the charity of your choice) that there will be a new record global average annual temperature within the next five years (2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, or 2014"

However, that page wasn't about general cooling. What I actually wrote on page 208 is:

“Not withstanding a hot regional blip in Australia, the odds are not good that 2009 will be a record breaking warm year. On current trends it may be cooler again than 2008.”

We know CO2 emissions continue to rise, we know methane emissions continue to rise. Are you willing to wager $2,000 against my $20 that 2009 will be “the hottest year on record”?

 

By rights, if you are so confident that what I wrote in Air Con on p208 was wrong, you should be leaping at the chance.


UPDATE: Gareth has posted his response, to which I would add the following points:

On the child eating Greens comment he took out of context, he writes:

What I put in my original review was this: "Consider the mental space occupied by someone who is willing to write, publish and promote this (p247): What they [wild greens] really mean is that they want ordinary families and kids to become extinct, leaving space for the Green elite to run the planet and enjoy exclusive bird-watching excursions while feasting on the bones of six year olds who'd earlier been sold to Asian brothels"

Truffle correctly points out I wrote the paragraph, but he gave no hint in his original review of the context (it was a sarcastic reference by me paraphrasing some of the loony things wilder greens had suggested, including cannibalism to keep the population down).

In his final attempt to address my concerns, Gareth does now give a little bit of context, grudgingly, but doesn't include the anchor-quote from German environmentalist Carl Amery: "We in the green movement aspire to a cultural model in which killing a forest will be considered more contemptible than the sale of 6-year-old children to Asian brothels."

If you have a question about someone's "mental space" Truffle, I suggest you start with Ted Turner and Carl Amery. I merely reported their words, so presumably if my paraphrasing offended you so should the original utterances. Lyall Watson's comments in the Financial Times on cannibalism, by the way, arose because he spent time with cannibals and wrote about his experiences. He was a New Age Gaia believer, author of the book Supernature.

Moving on to the substance of the criticisms in the post above, Gareth now acknowledges the link he provided supports what I wrote in Air Con about warming of the Southern hemisphere releasing CO2 about 800 years later which then impacts on the north.

He accuses me of trying "to make a fuss about it", whilst ignoring that it was he who chose this particular point to try and slam me on, unsuccessfully as it now turns out.

He now concedes that on current data we don't really know whether the warming began in the South or the North (the studies I've seen, including the ones cited by his source material, all suggest South), but if he's conceding that point now shouldn't he perhaps have put his brain in gear before opening mouth to attack me on this exact issue in the first place?

Hopeless.

'He then says:

"But one thing's clear, warming 800 years ago is not driving the increase in atmospheric CO2 now. There's 40% more than there was in the 1850s."

Let me illustrate, politely, the gap in Gareth's logic here. For centuries, the planet has been in apparent CO2 balance, with an atmospheric level of 280 to 300ppm. But there are several possible explanations for the increase that Gareth failed to factor into the certainty of his comment above.

One is that a surplus can result not just from increased production of CO2, but also from decreased removal of it - in other words, we've removed some of the carbon sinks that would have otherwise soaked it up.

Vast swathes of the globe have had forests cut down in the past 150 years to make way for farms and cities, as human population grew from a billion to seven billion. Deforestation is a major contribution to atmospheric CO2 not just because the wood might be cleared by burning, but also because it's like chopping out a lung. Earth can't breathe as deeply, and therefore can't process the CO2 as quickly as it did two centuries ago.

Therefore, in sharp contrast to Gareth's assurances, increased CO2 from solar warming out of the Little Ice Age may well play a large role in contributing to the CO2 problem today, because it adds to the current surplus and there are not enough forests to deal with it.

Gareth, like many other AGW believers, will instantly chime on the isotope ratios as if this proves human influence is to blame. Not necessarily. It has been established that carbon isotopes from fossil fuel burning are not as easily "digested" back into plant life, so it is entirely conceivable that the most easily digested carbon will be taken in first, and the harder bits left lying around in the atmosphere longer. If there's been a big growth in natural CO2 emissions, they're competing with human-sourced CO2. One would expect the atmospheric ratio to reflect that, and reflect the fact that anthropogenic emissions are on the losing side when it comes to being re-absorbed by carbon sinks.

The oceans are having to work harder because of deforestation as well. So all of these complex factors are at play.

Air Con makes allowances for uncertainties like these, but the arrogance of AGW believers, as illustrated by Gareth's writings, is a tragic indictment on the way they've turned global warming into a religious belief with creeds that must be adhered to, instead of a scientific question with major complexities that need to be resolved.

Gareth has already taken a hammering, deservedly, for his misunderstanding of his own source material as alluded to above. But he's prone to preaching generalities in other areas as well.

For example, he says this:

"The warming is always fast, but the descent into full ice age conditions is relatively gradual"

While descent into full ice ages tends to be driven by orbital cycles, hence the "gradual" aspect, one might by misled by Gareth's comment into believing that warming is always fast, and cooling is always slow. Not so. Greenland ice cores show massive fluctuations in temperature, both up and down, that could occur in as little as a decade for either phenomenon, and produce long term (1000 years or more) of cold or warmth. At the start of the Younger Dryas period, for example, temperatures plunged more than 3C in ten years, provoking a millennium of cold.

The Little Ice Age is described in a NOAA report as an example of the fastest temperature decline in modern history:

"...interestingly the LIA is characterized by the most rapid onset of any of these Holocene cold periods (O'Brien et al., 1995). Initial measurements of CO2 in air bubbles of the GISP2 core (Wahlen et al., 1991) indicate that between AD 1530-1810 atmospheric CO2 levels remained relatively constant at 280+/- ppmv"

Interesting too that the baseline for CO2 measurement by the IPCC appears to be the amount set during the cooler LIA, when you would expect CO2 to be low (having been locked into ice and colder oceans).

As for Gareth's wager, he sets up a strawman. Beyond observing in Air Con that recent temperatures are falling from their highs and the sun is going quieter (which historically is linked to colder climate), I don't extrapolate cooling beyond 2009/10. I repeatedly make the point in the book that Earth has warmed over the past century as it pulls out of the Little Ice Age, and unless someone can convince me (a la Swanson & Tsonis, 2009) that this warming has ended I have little reason to suspect Earth won't continue to gradually warm for awhile.

Therefore, contrary to Gareth's assertion, I'm not wedded to medium to long term cooling - simply because we don't have enough data on where the current trend is going. The MWP lasted several hundred years.

However, for $100 to a charity of his choice (and vice versa) I'm happy to say I don't think 2009 will be a record warm year, and I doubt 2010 will be.

The re-emergence of the natural El Nino later this year however would boost 2010 temps and certainly 2011. How do we control such variables in a wager? To leave them uncorrected means we are simply gambling on oceanic oscillations which, let's face it, is one of the factors I attribute the 1998/early 2000s warmth to. Even if Gareth wins and 2010 turns out to be a record warm year, if it's done by coasting on El Nino it will be a very hollow victory for Trufflehunter.

On the other hand, if 2010 turns out to be a record warm year despite a La Nina, and despite a quiet sun, then not only will I happily pay Gareth's charity a hundred bucks, I'll drink a warm fish milkshake as well.

For those who'd like to follow the debate about Gareth's alleged 'review' of Air Con, here's the main sequence:

http://hot-topic.co.nz/somethin’-stupid/

http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_briefing_room/2009/05/laughing-at-the-loon.html

http://hot-topic.co.nz/like-being-savaged-by-a-dead-sheep/

http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_briefing_room/2009/05/the-new-adventures-of-trufflehunter.html

http://hot-topic.co.nz/quirk-strangeness-not-much-charm/

http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_briefing_room/2009/05/leading-gareth-into-deep-waters.html

http://hot-topic.co.nz/a-very-public-own-goal/

http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_briefing_room/2009/05/right-back-at-ya-gareth.html

MIT channels Hot Topic

Funniest claim of the week has to be this one from MIT in the US:

A new study, which researchers have called "the most exhaustive end-to-end analysis of climate change impacts yet performed", predicts that global warming could be twice as bad as previous estimates had suggested.

Published this month in the Journal of Climate, the MIT-based research found a 90% probability that worldwide surface temperatures will rise at least 9 degrees by 2100.

Pulling from a variety of data sources back in 2007, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) projected temperature increases anywhere from 2 to 11 degrees by the end of the century. Now due to this new data, it looks like the higher range of that projection may be closer to the truth.

The new study was done using 400 applications of a computer model...

Yep, those last four words are the deal-breaker: proof positive that MIT has given itself over to climate nerds who don't actually have a clue what they're talking about but who would be right at home posting something like this here.

Why do I say this? Because as the graph on page 34 of Air Con proves, when CO2 levels were a whopping 7,000 parts per million in the atmosphere in the past, Earth's temperature topped out at 22C, about eight degrees higher on average than now.

Image002

So if CO2 doubles this century to 700 ppm, just a tenth of the historical figure, MIT would have us believe the temperature increase will exceed where it was at 7,000 ppm.

Yeah, right.

As the graph, and Air Con, show, historically CO2 levels have no correlative relationship to temperature.

Reviews of Air Con: The Seriously Inconvenient Truth About Global Warming

As we've done previously with other books, here's a repository of reviews of Air Con as they emerge.

Australian scientist Warwick Hughes writes:

This book by New Zealand journalist Ian Wishart - a #1 bestselling author four times, surprised me by the completeness with which he reviewed and presents alternatives to the plethora of IPCC inspired spin and publicity which floods our media today. His sixteen chapters examining aspects of the debate are meticulously footnoted and thus are a valuable reference resource for those wishing to dig deeper or keep up to speed with the unfolding global warming / carbon reduction political drama in years to come.

Professor Bob Carter, climate expert, has called Air Con the "definitive" book.

Christopher Monckton, Third Viscount of Brenchley, writes

Air Condemonstrates, with hundreds of scientific references, that "global warming" was not, is not, and will not be a global crisis; that, even if per impossibile it might be, it is far more cost-effective to adapt as and if needed than to attempt to mitigate ‘global warming’ by cutting emissions of carbon dioxide; and that all attempts at mitigation would serve only to imprison the very poorest in their poverty, thereby perversely increasing world population and consequently the ‘carbon footprint’ of humankind, achieving an outcome precisely the opposite of that which was (however piously) intended.

“The UN, Mikhail Gorbachev, Jacques Chirac, and other world-government wannabes are plotting to establish nothing less than a global, bureaucratic-centralist dictatorship under the pretext that it is necessary to ‘Save The Planet’. Ian Wishart's book demonstrates that there is not the slightest scientific reason for the new, quasi-religious belief that The Planet needs Saving. The new religion is merely an excuse for world government. World government will not, repeat not, be democratic government.

“The ‘global warming’ debate is not really a debate about climatology - it is a debate about freedom. It is the aim of the growing world-government faction among the international classe politique to take away our hard-won freedom and democracy forever. I commend this timely book, which makes the scientific arguments comprehensible to the layman. Those who read it will help to forestall the new Fascists and so to keep us free.”

Dr Vincent Gray, UN IPCC expert reviewer, writes:

"I started reading this book with an intensely critical eye, expecting that a mere journalist could not possibly cope with the complexities of climate science...[But] The book is brilliant. The best I have seen which deals with the news item side of it as well as the science. He has done a very thorough job and I have no hesitation in unreserved commendation."

Vox Day, columnist, WorldNetDaily writes:

"From the Paleozoic to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, investigative journalist Ian Wishart delves into the science and statistics of anthropogenic climate change, only to discover the not so hidden agenda underlying the global warming scare. Air Con is a thorough summary of the current state of the debate, the science and the politics; it will be an important reference in any AGW skeptic's arsenal."

Micky's Muses blog writes:

"Air Con subjects the science behind global warming/climate change to scrutiny, and examines the individuals and institutions behind climate alarmism. In the process Air Con skewers the fright merchants with an up to date summary of the scientific facts"

 

TVNZ in denial over sinking Taku'u island

Gareth Renowden's Hot Topic blogsite on climate change is the gift that just keeps on giving.

Today, TVNZ's John Hudson, a former colleague of mine who I hold in high respect despite our strong difference of opinion  on this issue, has clambered all over the Hot-Topic site trying to defend his Sunday fiasco on global warming by claiming Taku'u is not sinking.

John Hudon May 26, 2009 at 8:48 pm

Takuu Island is not sinking. Yes it lies in an area where two tectonic plates meet but the geological evidence gathered at the time of the flooding last year shows there are ancient reef fossils just off the Island that are up to a metre above sea level. New coral has formed below sea level. This shows that the Island is not subsiding. Perhaps you would like to tell this to Wikipedia.

And again:

John Hudon May 26, 2009 at 9:02 pm

Calm down Steve your bias is showing. We didn’t mention tectonic plates because they have nothing to do with what is happening on Takuu Island. Have you considered the western Pacific warm pool, La Nina, thermal expansion, spring tides coinciding with storms? Perhaps you should get up there and find out like the aussies have.

And again:

John Hudon May 26, 2009 at 8:55 pm

Apart from reading Wikipedia what makes you think Takuu Island is sinking?

Perhaps this NZ Herald story from 2000 would help:

"The islands are just 12ft above see level, and they are sinking 11.8 inches a year."

Anyone who watched the Sunday programme can see the island is no longer languishing four metres above sea level, and if Hudson really wants us to believe sea levels in Taku'u atoll have risen three metres due to global warming in nine years - well, good luck.

Perhaps he should have read this recent article from veteran Pacific affairs correspondent Michael Field:

This dress rehearsal for sea level rise is not the result of global warming but rather of a grand, continental clash of the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates.

It has created the most rapidly extending active rift system on Earth, renown for its heavy magnitude earthquakes.

Auckland University’s Dr Richard Moyle, associate-professor of ethnomusicology, fears the end will come quickly for Takuu.

“A wave coming right through the living area of the village will do it overnight,” he told ISLANDS BUSINESS.

It will be interesting to see if Hot Topic's moonbats take the bait and try to defend the TVNZ coverage of Taku'u...

Air Con interview for our Queensland readers: 4BC this afternoon

Just a heads up to our readers in Queensland, 4BC drive host Michael Smith is interviewing me about Air Con: The Seriously Inconvenient Truth About Global Warming at 4:10pm this afternoon...the interview will also be streamed over the web.

This follows on from yesterday morning's interview in Adelaide that I've since been told was networked in Sydney and elsewhere. A reminder that Air Con is available at Angus & Robertson, Collins, Seekbooks Dymocks and other good retailers across Australia.

UPDATE: the streaming link should be this, running from 16:10 AEST (18:10 NZST) today. 

UPDATE 2: The podcast is here

Gummed by a tired truffle dog

Ah, I love it, seriously Gareth, this keeps me entertained of an afternoon.

Trufflehunter tries to have another crack after being caught overegging the global warming cake in his submissions to Parliament.

Taking issue with my assertions that Greenland is not wildly melting as Gareth has previously chirped, he writes:

To counter this, he quotes from an article in Science which discussed a paper at last year’s Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, describing how glaciers in SE Greenland had slowed down after a period of “galloping” towards the sea. This, Wishart implies, means that the whole of Greenland has stopped melting.

Wishart doesn't imply the whole of Greenland has stopped melting at all. And if he'd read page 183 of Air Con where this issue is covered, Gareth would have seen that. It appears, by his own admission he spent too much time "harrumphing" and not enough time reading.

Because he then says:

It’s a pity Wishart didn’t look at some of the other papers presented at the Fall AGU — there were at least 25 covering Greenland and its melting ice cap. Here’s the abstract from Wouters et al:

The abstract isn't actually that important to my point here, because my point is that this is yet more evidence Truffle never properly read Air Con. How do I know? Because footnote 292 on page 183 is the Wouters paper he just accused me of not reading.

And in case Truffle doesn't explain it properly, Wouters et al's paper is helpfully entitled "GRACE observes small-scale mass loss in Greenland" [my emphasis on small scale]. The paper was not called "Panic Stations: All Hands To The Pumps!".

The central premise of page 183 is that Greenland's melt is not that spectacular, and nowhere near where it needs to be to cause massive sea level rise on both current temperatures and extrapolations.

Gareth can quote alarmist climate scientists till the cows come home who sombrely warn of a one metre rise by mid-century, but I do wonder precisely how that will happen in light of Swanson and Tsonis' paper published this year, which suggests Earth's climate underwent a seismic shift early this decade and now appears to have entered a cooling phase likely to continue until 2025, followed by a brief warm spell then cooling for the rest of the century.

Greenland and Antarctica would have an uphill battle on that basis, although I'd be the first to acknowledge there's a timelag built in to how fast oceans and ice react to historic warming.

Swanson and Tsonis say the shift appears to have been caused by a number of oceanic oscillations and other climate factors all peaking around the same time, and knocking the existing climate predicitons off their perch. They acknowledge (Gareth, Cindy, StephenR etc take note) that Earth may be radiating more heat out to space because of changes in the way clouds are behaving (which puts existing GCM climate models into disarray and supports what Roy Spencher and John Christy have been saying for some time).

On the issue of sea level rise, Gareth pokes me with this:

if we look at the graph, we see that the current rate of SLR is 3.2mm per year, and it hasn’t dropped recently to 2mm per year as Wishart asserts. Does he have trouble reading a graph, one wonders? Or perhaps his data was out of date?

Once again, Gareth et al, I do urge you to read Air Con, the current number one bestseller :), before rushing into print. Becausehere's what's in Air Con:

"Satellite samplings suggest an average sea level rise of 3mm a year, or 3cm a decade, which works out at 30cm a century. This is where the IPCC gets its estimates of a 20cm to 43cm increase in sea levels by 2100. The UN's own IPCC Fourth Assessment Report concedes that net sea level rise observed so far may only be as high as 1.3mm a year, equivalent to 13cm a century."

I then quoted a study from the journal Science in Air Con:

"The 3.2 + 0.2 millimetre per year blobal mean sea level rise observed by the Topex/Poseidon satellite over 1993-98 is fully explained by thermal expansion of the oceans...the 20th cenutry sea level rise estimated from tide gauge records may have been overestimated."

In other words, a large chunk of the 3mm a year sea level increase may simply be thermal expansion lag, rather than melt contribution. And, as we've covered previously, the ARGO survey is not detecting overall warming of the oceans this decade.

WHere does this take us in terms of Gareth's one to two metres of sea level increase this century, especially in face of the Tsonis paper suggesting a cooler 21st century? Well, I wouldn't be betting your royalties from Hot Topic sales on the outcome Gareth.

Oh, and for the record Truffle, the data on sea level rise slowing to 2mm a year was publishing by the University of Colorado, Boulder in late 2008. The accompanying graph is here, and you cn clearly see the slowdown:

9865_large_tpjascum_trnd2__550x383 

UPDATE:

Oh, come on Truffle, is this the best you can do? If GRACE had found monster mass loss in Greenland they'd have been shouting it from the rooftops. Instead, they contented themselves with the melt around the edges. As you and I both know, Truff, Greenland's interior hasn't lost mass at all. And like I pointed out, a 0.5 millimetre contribution to sea levels every year [based on peak melt rates] will strike fear into the hearts of garden gnomes everywhere, equating as it does to 5cm a century.

I've yet to see you deal with any of the real points.

UPDATE TWO:

For the benefit of Greg, who asked about cooling trends. Relative to the highs of the late 90s early 2Ks, which corresponded to a sunspot maxima and major El Nino, average temperature peaks have fallen. This is loosely described as a cooling phase, but in terms of the climate debate beauty is in the eye of the beholder - the trend will depend on what your starting point is, what baseline average you are working from etc etc.

For example, 1998 was an El Nino spike and thus artificially high, so that even though 1999 onwards didn't hit that peak, they were still climbing relative to the early 90s...the momentum, or lag, built into this didn't really change until the early 2ks, where temperatures effectively plateaued then began to genuinely retreat, which the graph below tends to illustrate.

Trend 

Now, it is worth noting that just as El Nino pumped up temperatures, its evil twin La Nina cools the planet down, so on the face of it global warming alarmists want to claim the "record years" in the name of global warming but write off the colder years as "merely La Nina".

You can't actually have your Truffle and eat it too, if the cooling is mostly written off to natural you can't claim the benefits of a natural El Nino as proof of man-made global warming.

Earth has been pulling out of the Little Ice Age since around 1800, entirely naturally, and the obvious consequence of that is that Earth will warm up. This is the major underlying trend at present, muddled by two factors - decreasing output from the sun since 2003 which historically is linked to lower temperatures, and the 'climate shift' theory of Swanson and Tsonis which suggests the warming cycle has been spiked by a 2002 shift in Earth's climate oscillation synergies.

Air Con Number One again

Contrary to the assertions of some, Air Con continues to be the #1 bestselling non-fiction book in NZ according to the latest figures, published in the Sunday Star Times yesterday and confirmed with the book industry this morning.

Which goes to show the enormous public interest in the subject.


Unfortunately, for reasons unknown, the bestsellers list for the w/e May 16 that should have been published at its home website, http://www.booksellers.co.nz four days ago hasn't been.


More idiocy from the team at Hot Topic

 

 

As readers of Investigate will now be aware, the submissions to the ETS select committee of one Gareth Renowden, truffle farmer, South Island have been published.

Here's a salient extract from the latest Investigate magazine:

The political lobby group Oxfam, which may also stand to benefit from greater UN NGO funding if emissions schemes go ahead, is another urging the New Zealand government to immediately combat the perils of climate change.

“We must take urgent international action - now- to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to help poor countries adapt to the likely impacts of global climate change. Rich countries with high per capita emissions, like New Zealand, produce most of the greenhouse gases.”

Except, as we’ve seen, New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions are tiny.

Then there’s South Island truffle fancier Gareth Renowden, an “immediate past president of the NZ Truffle Association” and self-appointed ‘expert’ on human-caused climate change, who in March had told one tribunal:

“Action to restrict emissions in NZ will have no discernible impact on climate change in either NZ or the globe.”

But despite this glaring admission, Renowden made a submission to the parliamentary committee saying:

“Emissions reductions in NZ will need to mirror those of our key trading partners, whatever our local circumstances.”

That could be interpreted as good news, because Australia has shelved its emissions trading scheme in the meantime.

Renowden’s key line of reasoning appears to be that even though the US and Europe have created most of the CO2 emissions, that New Zealand should shoulder a much bigger burden than we’re responsible for so as “we are seen to be playing our part”.

The costs to New Zealand families of bearing this extra burden, says Renowden, are nothing compared to the costs of global warming.

To justify his claim, Renowden then tells Parliament’s ETS committee:

“Recent indications are that the pace of climate change has speeded up. Summer sea ice decline in the Arctic has been steep in recent years, ice mass loss in Greenland and Antarctica has increased, and expert views on likely sea level rise over the course of this century now run from lm upwards.”

Unfortunately, Renowden’s testimony was out of date before he even delivered it, as this extract from the journal Science three months earlier embarrassingly reveals.

“Ice loss in Greenland has had some climatologists speculating that global warming might have brought on a scary new regime of wildly heightened ice loss and an ever faster rise in sea level. But glaciologists reported at the American Geophysical Union meeting that Greenland ice’s Armageddon has come to an end,” reported Science.

If this stunning revelation had only been published a week before Renowden’s April submission, you could overlook the error. But this report dated all the way back to January.

“‘It has come to an end,’ glaciologist Tavi Murray of Swansea University in the United Kingdom said during a session at the meeting. ‘There seems to have been a synchronous switch-off’ of the speed-up, she said. Nearly everywhere around southeast Greenland, outlet glacier flows have returned to the levels of 2000…no one should be extrapolating the ice’s recent wild behavior into the future.”

As for sea level increases of “1m upwards”, Renowden was also dumped on by a series of studies published last year and whose findings are in the book Air Con.

“For Greenland alone to raise sea level by two metres by 2100, all of the outlet glaciers involved would need to move more than three times faster than the fastest outlet glaciers ever observed, or more than 70 times faster than they presently move,” reported Colorado scientist, Tad Pfeffer,  in a joint Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research/Scripps Institute of Oceanography study published in September last year. “And they would have to start moving that fast today, not 10 years from now. It is a simple argument with no fancy physics.”

So how much is Greenland currently melting, after the “hottest” period in recent history?

“It is now estimated that Greenland is accountable for a half millimeter rise in global sea level per year,” Air Con quotes one recent scientific study taken before the ice Armageddon suddenly stopped. For the uninitiated, at its peak melt Greenland would have contributed 50 millimetres to global sea level rise by the end of this century, or roughly two inches.

As for Antarctica melting, which Renowden referred to, latest satellite data (cited in Air Con) shows Antarctic sea ice at record levels and scientists admit the ice continent is mostly cooling, and cooling quite rapidly.

And what about Renowden’s assurances to the select committee that “experts” were agreed we were heading for sea level increases of a metre or more?

“Sea level rise is not only seen in the record, but is accelerating,” said the truffle farmer, whose knowledge of climate change has been praised by the Royal Society of New Zealand.

Well, according to the latest satellite data from the TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason 1 missions published in late 2008, despite the 2000s being the hottest decade in recent memory according to Renowden’s 2009 testimony, the rate of sea level increase has dropped by 30%, from 3mm a year down to 2mm a year since 2005, or 20cm for the entire century if extrapolated out – a slow down, not an acceleration, in rising sea levels.

The irony is that Renowden had told the select committee that they should expect high standards from submitters:

“I think the committee might like to reflect upon the factual accuracy expected of those making submissions. It is of course perfectly proper for a submitter to offer an opinion upon any matter related to the committee’s remit, but I have to suggest that when it comes to matters of fact the committee should hold submitters to a suitable standard of evidential accuracy.”