Argentina - Cold weather kills thousands of cattle and over 100 people
25 Jul 2010
The polar wave that has trapped the Southern Cone of South America has caused an estimated one hundred deaths and killed thousands of cattle, according to the latest reports on Monday from Argentina, south of Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile and Bolivia.
Deaths were caused by hypothermia or gas intoxication from defective burners and heaters.
In the south of Brazil and central Paraguay thousands of cattle have been reported dead, while in the south of Chile an agriculture emergency was declared and in Buenos Aires at the peak of the winter season, tens of regional flights had to be cancelled because of the extreme weather conditions leaving thousands stranded in the Argentine capital.
In Argentina the number of dead from hypothermia reached twelve plus another 33 intoxicated with carbon monoxide.
Bolivia reported 18 deaths because of freezing temperatures, most of them in EL Alto next to the capital La Paz, one of the highest cities of the world.
Even the east of the country which is mostly sub-tropical climate has been exposed to frosts and almost zero freezing temperatures.
To prevent contagion from flu and other illness the Bolivian Ministry of Education suspended schools until next Wednesday. Weather forecast is for the freezing climate to continue until August with cyclical peaks.
In southern Brazil at least 19 homeless died of hypothermia, and in the city of Urupema, next to Argentina temperatures dropped to a record minus 7.8 Celsius. In the Amazon basin in some cities thermometers dropped to 7 Celsius last Saturday.
In Santiago de Chile freezing temperatures reached minus 2 Celsius killing several homeless and intoxicating two families with malfunctioning burners.
But in the region of Aysen, 1.600 to the south of Santiago, villages are covered in snow and isolated; thousands of cattle and sheep are short of food and minimum temperatures dropped to minus 15 Celsius.
An agriculture emergency has been declared in Aysen; the main airport at Balmaceda has been closed for a week and several small towns have no power.
Paraguay so far has reported nine dead because of freezing weather, mostly homeless, and in the capital Asunción the government has opened refuges to host people overnight.
In Uruguay, one death has been reported and temperatures in the centre of the country dropped to minus 5 Celsius while the prices of fresh fruit and vegetables have soared.
In Peru which is more exposed to cold climate, so far 104 people have been reported dead because of pneumonia and respiratory diseases, caused by freezing temperatures and poor medical attention.
Although impressive these numbers are considered “normal” by Peruvian sanitary authorities for this time of the year.
The Peruvian government has declared a state of emergency in more than half the country due to cold weather.
Most of the areas affected are in the south, where temperatures regularly drop below zero centigrade at this time of year.
However, this time temperatures have dropped to as low as -24C.
The state of emergency means regional authorities can dip into emergency funds to provide medicine, blankets and shelter to those most affected.
Seasonal deaths
The state of emergency was declared in 16 of Peru's 24 regions.
This week Peru's capital, Lima, recorded its lowest temperatures in 46 years at 8C, and the emergency measures apply to several of its outlying districts.
In Peru's hot and humid Amazon region, temperatures dropped as low as 9C. The jungle region has recorded five cold spells this year.
Hundreds of people - nearly half of them very young children - have died of cold-related diseases, such as pneumonia, in Peru's mountainous south where temperatures can plummet at night to -20C.
Poor rural populations living at more than 3,000m above sea level are the most affected.
Doctors say malnutrition, extreme poverty and poor living conditions are major contributing factors to the seasonal deaths.
Last week’s meeting of 700+ scientists, policymakers, and concerned citizens in Chicago to discuss the science and economics of global warming at the Fourth International Conference on Climate Change was a huge success as measured by the intent of its sponsors: to establish once and for all that the climate realist position is increasingly the accepted conclusion among thinking people in the three categories noted above. That position is this: manmade global warming is not a crisis.
Yes, all parties at the conference pretty much agreed that there was a good deal of warming in the 1980s and 1990s, and that the trend stopped and reversed in the current decade. Global temperatures have been falling in recent years, even though the weather stations and other data chosen to represent the official temperature records are in fact skewed to show higher and more-rising temperatures than are actually occurring.
The predictions of a steady, horrifying increase in temperatures have proven false, which should have been a great embarrassment to the climate alarmists who made the claims and set them as the basis for their extravagant power grabs such as emissions limits and cap and trade.
Yet the embarrassment has not been forthcoming from those proven to be wrong, because they are shameless.
One speaker at the conference, whom I was privileged to see, was James Delingpole, a non-scientist and a writer (a novelist, even!), who wowed the crowd with great common sense and a powerful insight into what’s really been behind the global warming scare all along. As Delingpole wrote in the Spectator after conference:
[T]he Anthropogenic Global Warming scare is not about science and never was. As Climategate proved (but as some of us suspected long before), AGW is the invention of a cabal of activists, all working towards more or less the same ecofascist agenda: Mother Gaia is suffering; it’s mostly our fault; the only way to atone for our sins is to destroy Western industrial civilisation and shackle ourselves with a form of One World government run by ‘experts’ and bureaucrats over whom we have no democratic control. It is a battle against a tyranny every bit as great as we faced in the second world war or the Cold War. All what’s different about this enemy is that instead of jackboots it wears long hair, a warm, caring smile and drives a VW Combi with an ‘Atomkraft Nein Danke’ sticker.
That’s something we climate realists have known all along and had been trying in vain to convince people of for some years: that global warming never was about saving the planet but always just a pretext for progressive elitists to take ever-greater control over your life and mine.
In fact, Delingpole notes, even if global warming were to occur, it would be a good thing. Warm periods have tended to coincide with human thriving, and cold periods are associated with war, famine, and economic stagnation. And the sad fact is that we are far more likely to be heading toward uncomfortable cold than comfortable warmth, Delingpole notes:
[W]hile there has been no global warming since 1998, the general view among those who really know is that we could now be entering a lengthy period — 20 or 30 years (most of the rest of your and my life buggered) — of global cooling.
All the auguries are there. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), which works in roughly 30-year cycles, has now begun its cooling phase (such as we last had in the chilly years between the mid-1940s and the mid-1970s). We’re about to enter a La Niña phase in the El Niño/Southern Oscillation, which means at the very least we’re due for a winter every bit as harsh as the most recent one. Worse still, low sunspot activity suggests we might be entering a solar minimum period, such as the Maunder Minimum (1645 to 1715) when those ice fairs were held on the Thames, or the Dalton Minimum (1790 to 1830) which gave us both Napoleon’s frozen retreat from Moscow and the terrible ‘Year Without a Summer’ (1816). Periods of cooling such as this are much more greatly to be feared, of course, than periods of warming — which historically have coincided with abundance, relative peacefulness, economic growth and cultural flourishing.
Or, if you want to be really depressed, there’s always the possibility that we’re on the brink of another ice age. Warm ‘interglacial’ periods such as the one we’re in now last about 10,000 years. And we’re already past the 10,000th year.
And it isn’t hysterical alarmists saying this stuff. Climate realists don’t really do hysterical alarmism.
Delingpole is right: the attendees at the conference were remarkably good-natured and cheerful, and the discussion was strong on real science and economics and without any interesting infighting.
As was noted more than once at the conference, organizer James Taylor of The Heartland Institute invited countless well-known global warming alarmists to attend, and only two chose to do so. And none of the prominent ones deigned to step forward for a real discussion of the science and economic facts behind the matter.
That’s been the attitude of the alarmists from the start: to claim “the science is settled” and insist that we all pay no attention to the repulsively obese ex-vice president behind the curtain and move on to changing our lifestyles to suit their vile fancies regarding the limits that should be placed on the energy and other resource consumption of ordinary people—while alarmists such as Al Gore notoriously live in a manner King Midas would have been ashamed to contemplate.
The fact is, the big money—including the corporate money, despite hysterical claims to the contrary—is all on the alarmist side. Climate change realists are continually being pushed out of jobs and their scientific papers rejected simply because they dare to question the phony consensus of big-government elitists. As Delingpole notes:
It’s no wonder that the bit of my speech that got the biggest laugh was when I asked: ‘How many of you here are in the pay of Big Oil?’ No hands were raised. ‘And how many of you would like to be in the pay of Big Oil?’ Up shot 150 arms. ‘Guess we picked the wrong side of the debate to be on,’ I said, hardly needing to explain that companies like Shell and BP pump far, far more money into eco-nonsense like carbon trading and green posturing than they do into sceptical science.
That’s the problem with being an Evil Climate Change Denier. The tide is turning in our favour. History will vindicate us. But until then the only perks of the job are the joy of one another’s company and the smug satisfaction of knowing that one day we’ll be able to look at the wreckage of disasters like cap and trade, David Cameron’s wind farms and the IPCC’s junk science predictions and say: ‘I told you so.’
There is one thing and one thing only behind the global warming scare, and it is not science. It is greed for power. The truth is slowly coming out, however, and as Delingpole says, the alarmists will ultimately be pushed back.
In the meantime, however, we are in great danger of instituting a catastrophically enormous waste of money and human toil by enacting cap and trade and other such outrages. Being right would be meager solace under those circumstances.
Note: the author is employed by the main sponsor of the conference, The Heartland Institute. That, however, does not influence his opinion in the slightest, because the science does that for him.
Also note: Tomorrow in this space I will publish my report on the conference presentations.
Left-wing Env. Scientist Bails Out Of Global Warming Movement: Declares it a ‘corrupt social phenomenon…strictly an imaginary problem of the 1st World middleclass’
Marc Morano, Climate Depot, July 26, 2010
Physicist Dr. Denis Rancourt, a former professor and environmental science researcher at the University of Ottawa, has officially bailed out of the man-made global warming movement.
In a hard-hitting and exclusive new exclusive video just released by Climate Depot, Dr. Rancourt declares that the entire man-made global warming movement is nothing more than a “corrupt social phenomenon.” “It is as much psychological and social phenomenon as anything else,” Rancourt, who has published peer-reviewed research, explained in a June 8, 2010 essay.
“I argue that by far the most destructive force on the planet is power-driven financiers and profit-driven corporations and their cartels backed by military might; and that the global warming myth is a red herring that contributes to hiding this truth. In my opinion, activists who, using any justification, feed the global warming myth have effectively been co-opted, or at best neutralized,” Rancourt said.
“Global warming is strictly an imaginary problem of the First World middleclass,” he asserted.
Rancourt’s dissent on man-made climate fears has not set well with many of his fellow green friends. “When I tell environmental activists that global warming is not something to be concerned about, they attack me — they shun me, they do not allow me to have my materials published in their magazines, editors,” Rancourt explained to Climate Depot.
Rancourt bluntly examines why his fellow environmentalists are wrapped up in promoting climate alarm. (Note: Rancourt also ridicules environmental concern over acid rain and the ozone hole. See below)
“They look for comfortable lies that they can settle into and alleviate the guilt they feel about being on privileged end of the planet — a kind of survivors guilt. A lot of these environmentalists are guilt laden individuals who need to alleviate the guilt without taking risks,” he said. “They are weekend activists…looking for lies to hitch onto.”
“The modern environmental move has hijacked itself by looking for an excuse to stay comfortable and stay away from actual battle. Ward Churchill has called this pacifism as pathology,” he explained. “If you are really concerned about saving world’s forests or habitat destruction, then fight against habitat destruction, don’t go off in tenuous thing about co2 concentration in the atmosphere. Actually address the question; otherwise you are weakening your effect as an activist.”
Rancourt openly expresses his hostility for former Vice President Al Gore’s 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”
“I felt ill walking out of the theatre. It’s terrible. It does not respect the intelligence the viewer. The film does not acknowledge people can think for themselves at all,” Rancourt said.
Rancourt lamented how “environmentalists could just gobble this up and agree with [Gore's film] in a non critical fashion.”
Gore “strikes me as someone working for someone — as someone who will financially benefit from this. He does not give me impression of someone who genuinely cares about environmental or social justice.
Rancourt spared no mercy for the embattled UN IPCC. The scientists are “named by governments, they are scientists who accept to serve a political role. Their mission is to write a report” that “is meant to be used by government. Their goal is find a conclusion…it is a political process.” [Editor's Note: Climate Depot's Executive Editor Marc Morano appeared on Dr. Denis Rancourt's Radio Show for One Hour in May 2010: Morano: The global warming narrative...was total bunko, it was a con job...a scientific scandal of the highest order']
Rancourt is also very critical of proposed global warming carbon trading or cap and trade.
“Someone is going to make a lot of money from these schemes. I have great distrust for it. It is not motivated by true concern for social justice and the environment. It can only be about powerful financiers. I see it as an horrendous scam,” Rancourt said, adding he “I completely agree” with UK environmental guru James Lovelock who called carbon trading “verging on a gigantic scam.”
But it is his fellow University professors that Rancourt has the least amount of patience with.
“They are all virtually all service intellectuals. They will not truly critique, in a way that could threaten the power interests that keep them in their jobs. The tenure track is just a process to make docile and obedient intellectuals that will then train other intellectuals,” Rancourt said.
Left wing Env. Scientist Bails Out Of Global Warming Movement: Declares it a corrupt social phenomenon...strictly an imaginary problem of the 1st World middleclass 080610banner4
“You have this army of university scientists and they have to pretend like they are doing important research without ever criticizing the powerful interests in a real way. So what do they look for, they look for elusive sanitized things like acid rain, global warming,” he added. This entire process “helps to neutralize any kind of dissent,” according to Rancourt.
“When you do find something bad, you quickly learn and are told you better toe the line on this — your career depends on it,” Rancourt said.
Some Key Excerpts from Denis Rancourt:
Left-wing Env. Scientist & Physicist Dr. Denis Rancourt: Some Big Lies of Science – June 2010
Rancourt Excerpt: Environmental scientists naively and knowingly work hand in hand with finance-corporate shysters, mainstream media, politicians, and state and international bureaucrats to mask real problems and to create profit opportunities for select power elites…I exposed the global warming cooptation scam in an essay that Alexander Cockburn writing in The Nation called ‘one of the best essays on greenhouse myth-making from a left perspective.’ [...]
My essay prompted David F. Noble to research the question and write The Corporate Climate Coup to expose how the media embrace followed the finance sector’s realization of the unprecedented potential for revenues that going green could represent. [...] I argue that by far the most destructive force on the planet is power-driven financiers and profit-driven corporations and their cartels backed by military might; and that the global warming myth is a red herring that contributes to hiding this truth. In my opinion, activists who, using any justification, feed the global warming myth have effectively been co-opted, or at best neutralized.”
“Global warming is strictly an imaginary problem of the First World middleclass.”
Rancourt Ridicules Ozone Hole Claims: ‘Do you know of anyone who has been killed by the ozone hole?’
Rancourt Mocks Acid Rain Claims: As a physicist and Earth scientist turned environmental scientist, I could not find an example of a demonstrated negative impact on lakes or forests from acid rain. In my opinion, contrary to the repeated claims of the scientist authors, the research on acid rain demonstrates that acid rain could not possibly have been the problem’ – I concluded it had been a fake problem. [...] Acid rain very, very similar to global warming. A Sanitized problem. What I found, researched from the 1950’s on and I concluded that is had been a fake problem. The effect on lake acidity from acid rain was so subtle so difficult to measure — virtually impossible to measure [hype about acid rain was] at a period when forests being destroyed by real things.
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Rancourt is not alone among left-of-center scientists and activists from dissenting on man-made global warming. (Excerpts from 2009 Environment & Public Works Committee Ranking Member Sen. James Inhofe speech)
Sen. Inhofe: It is becoming increasingly clear that skepticism about man-made global warming fear is not a partisan left vs. right issue. In fact, many scientists and activists who are also progressive environmentalists believe climate fear promotion has “co-opted” or “hijacked” the green movement.
In August 2009, the science of global warming was so tenuous that even activists at green festivals were expressing doubts over man-made climate fears. “One college professor, confided to me in private conversation that, ‘I’m not sure climate change is real,’” according to a report from the New York Green Festival.
The left-wing blog Huffington Post surprised many by featuring an article on January 3, 2009, by Harold Ambler, demanding an apology from Gore for promoting unfounded global warming fears. The Huffington Post article accused Gore of telling “the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of humankind” because he claimed the science was settled on global warming. The Huffington Post article titled “Mr. Gore: Apology Accepted” adds, “It is Mr. Gore and his brethren who are flat-Earthers,” not the skeptics.
The Huffington Post article continues, “Let us neither cripple our own economy by mislabeling carbon dioxide a pollutant nor discourage development in the Third World, where suffering continues unabated, day after day.”
UK atmospheric scientist Richard Courtney, a left-of-political center socialist, is another dissenter of man-made climate fears. Courtney, a UN IPCC expert reviewer and a UK-based climate and atmospheric science consultant, is a self-described socialist who also happens to reject man-made climate fears. Courtney declared in 2008 that there is “no correlation between the anthropogenic emissions of GHG (greenhouse gases) and global temperature.”
Joining Courtney are many other progressive environmentalist scientists:
Former Greenpeace member and Finnish scientist Dr. Jarl R. Ahlbeck, a lecturer of environmental technology and a chemical engineer at Abo Akademi University in Finland who has authored 200 scientific publications, is also skeptical of man-made climate doom. Ahlbeck wrote in 2008, “Contrary to common belief, there has been no or little global warming since 1995 and this is shown by two completely independent datasets. But so far, real measurements give no ground for concern about a catastrophic future warming.” (LINK)
Scientist and life-long liberal Democrat rejects climate fears
Life-long liberal Democrat Dr. Martin Hertzberg, a retired Navy meteorologist with a PhD in physical chemistry, also declared his dissent of warming fears in 2008. “As a scientist and life-long liberal Democrat, I find the constant regurgitation of the anecdotal, fear mongering clap-trap about human-caused global warming to be a disservice to science,” Hertzberg wrote. “The global warming alarmists don’t even bother with data! All they have are half-baked computer models that are totally out of touch with reality and have already been proven to be false,” Hertzberg added. (LINK)
Ivy League Geologist Dr. Robert Giegengack, the former chair of Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, publicly announced he voted for Gore in 2000 and said he would do so again. But Giegengack does not agree with Gore’s science views and states that global warming does not even qualify as one of the top ten ENVIRONMENTAL problems facing the world, let alone one of the top problems. “In terms of [global warming's] capacity to cause the human species harm, I don’t think it makes it into the top 10,” Giegengack said in an interview in the May/June 2007 issue of the Pennsylvania Gazette. (LINK)
‘Intellectual blasphemy’
Other liberal environmental scientists and activists are now joining Giegengack.
Alexander Cockburn, a maverick journalist who leans left on most topics, lambasted the alleged global-warming consensus on the political Web site CounterPunch.org, arguing that there’s no evidence yet that humans are causing the rise in global temperature. After publicly speaking to reject man-made warming fears, Cockburn wrote on February 22, 2008, “I have been treated as if I have committed intellectual blasphemy.” Cockburn harshly critiqued the political left for embracing climate alarmism. “This turn to climate catastrophism is tied into the decline of the left, and the decline of the left’s optimistic vision of altering the economic nature of things through a political program. The left has bought into environmental catastrophism because it thinks that if it can persuade the world that there is indeed a catastrophe, then somehow the emergency response will lead to positive developments in terms of social and environmental justice,” Cockburn wrote. [See: A July 2007 and a March 2008 report detail how skeptical scientists have faced threats and intimidation - LINK & LINK ]
CNN – not exactly a bastion of conservatism – had yet another of its meteorologists dissent from warming fears. Chad Myers, a meteorologist for 22 years and certified by the American Meteorological Society, spoke out against anthropogenic climate claims on CNN in December. “You know, to think that we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant,” Myers said during “Lou Dobbs Tonight” on December 18, 2008. “Mother Nature is so big, the world is so big, the oceans are so big – I think we’re going to die from a lack of fresh water or we’re going to die from ocean acidification before we die from global warming, for sure,” Myers explained.
Myers joins fellow CNN meteorologist Rob Marciano, who compared Gore’s film to ‘fiction’ in 2007, and CNN anchor Lou Dobbs who just said of global warming fear promotion on January 5, “It’s almost a religion without any question.”
Perhaps the biggest shock to the global warming debate was the recent conversion of renowned French geophysicist Dr. Claude Allegre from being a believer in dangerous man-made warming fears to being a skeptic. Allegre, a former French Socialist Party leader and a member of both the French and U.S. Academies of Science, was one of the first scientists to sound global warming fears 20 years ago, but he now says the cause of climate change is “unknown.” He ridiculed what he termed the “prophets of doom of global warming” in a September 2006 article. (LINK) Allegre has authored more than 100 scientific articles, written 11 books, and received numerous scientific awards including the Goldschmidt Medal from the Geochemical Society of the United States. He now believes the global warming hysteria is motivated by money. “The ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some people!” he explained.
‘Hijacked’ environmental left
Left-wing Professor David Noble of Canada’s York University has joined the growing chorus of disenchanted liberal activists. Noble now believes that the movement has “hyped the global climate issue into an obsession.” Noble wrote a May 8, 2007, essay entitled “The Corporate Climate Coup” which details how global warming has “hijacked” the environmental left and created a “corporate climate campaign,” “divert[ing] attention from the radical challenges of the global justice movement.” (LINK)
Botanist Dr. David Bellamy, a famed UK environmental campaigner, former lecturer at Durham University, and host of a popular UK TV series on wildlife, converted from believer to a skeptic about global warming. Bellamy, a committed environmentalist, now says that shift cost him his career at the BBC. Bellamy said in 2008, “My opinion is that there is absolutely no proof that carbon dioxide has anything to do with any impending catastrophe. The science has, quite simply, gone awry. In fact, it’s not even science any more, it’s anti-science. There’s no proof, it’s just projections and if you look at the models people such as Gore use, you can see they cherry pick the ones that support their beliefs.” (LINK)
Geologist Peter Sciaky echoes this growing backlash of left-wing activists about global warming. Sciaky, who describes himself as a “liberal and a leftist” wrote on June 9, 2007, “I do not know a single geologist who believes that [global warming] is a man-made phenomenon.”
Ecologist Dr. Patrick Moore, a Greenpeace founding member, has also joined the ranks of the dissenters. “It is clear the contention that human-induced CO2 emissions and rising CO2 levels in the global atmosphere are the cause of the present global warming trend is a hypothesis that has not yet been elevated to the level of a proven theory. Causation has not been demonstrated in any conclusive way,” Moore, the chief scientist for Greenspirit, wrote in 2006. (End Inhofe Speech Excerpt)
Peru declares state of emergency amid plunging temperatures
Hundreds die from extreme cold in remote mountain villages also struggling with severe poverty
Annie Kelly, The Observer, Sunday 1 August 2010
Peru has declared a state of emergency after hundreds of children died from freezing conditions that have seen temperatures across much of the South American country plummet to a 50-year low. In 16 of Peru's 25 regions, temperatures have fallen below -24C.
Reports from the country say 409 people, most of them children, have already died from the cold, with temperatures predicted to fall further in coming weeks.
Worst hit are Peru's poorest and most isolated communities, which are already living on the edge of survival in remote Andean mountain villages more than 3,000 metres above sea level.
Although those living at such high-altitude would expect temperatures to drop below zero at this time of year, NGOs and government officials say many are unable to withstand the extreme cold which they are now experiencing.
"Over the past three or four years we have seen temperatures during the winter months get lower, and people are unable to survive this," said Silvia Noble, from Plan Peru, an NGO. "This cold weather is now extending into areas that never saw these low temperatures before and children and elderly people are especially at risk as they are not physically strong enough to last month after month of sub-zero conditions."
Last December, Observer reporters visited farming communities living at more than 3,000 metres above sea level in Huancavelica – one of the areas worst hit by the current cold snap – to find families already struggling with rising child mortality fuelled by malnutrition, poverty and what they say are increasingly erratic and unreliable weather patterns.
Seven months on, local NGOs say these mountain villages are now racked with pneumonia, chronic respiratory illnesses and hunger.
The freeze is also killing hundreds of alpaca. Farmers are struggling to keep livestock alive due to frozen water points and a lack of food, which could have severe repercussions on the ability of families to see out the winter.
The declaration of a state of emergency means authorities in affected states can get emergency funds to provide medicine, blankets and shelter to those most at risk.
Argentina Has Colder Winter Than Antartica, Spurring Record Power Imports
By Rodrigo Orihuela - Aug 3, 2010 3:45 PM GMT
Argentina is importing record amounts of energy as the coldest winter in 40 years drives up demand and causes natural-gas shortages, prompting Dow Chemical Co. and steelmaker Siderar SAIC to scale back production.
Electricity supplied from Brazil and Paraguay rose to a daily combined record of about 1,000 megawatts on July 12, while consumption peaked at 20,396 megawatts three days later, according to Buenos Aires-based energy broker Cammesa. Shipments of liquefied natural gas are set to double this year.
Dow, Siderar and aluminum maker Aluar Aluminio Argentino SAIC are among companies closing plants, cutting output or seeking alternative energy sources after temperatures in parts of Argentina fell below those of Antarctica on July 15. Rising demand is exacerbating a shortage that began six years ago as economic growth accelerated and energy investment fell. The shortage is boosting costs as companies spend more to guarantee supplies.
“The situation is getting worse, because the shortage period is growing every year,” Gerardo Rabinovich, a director at the General Mosconi Energy Institute in Buenos Aires and an adviser to the opposition Radical Party, said in a telephone interview. “When this started in 2004, it lasted for about a week, then it was two weeks and now it’s more than a month.”
In July, temperatures in Buenos Aires were, on average, 1 degree Celsius below the usual low and high of 8 and 14 degrees (46 and 57 degrees Farenheit), with temperatures plummeting to about 2 degrees Celsius on July 15.
Renewed Cold
Also on July 15, temperatures in Mendoza, the wine- producing region in western Argentina, fell as low as -8.9 degrees Celsius below the temperature registered that day in the Argentine-controlled area of the South Pole, according to a national weather institute report.
Argentina is bracing for a renewed polar front this month. On Aug. 1, almost half of the country’s 23 provinces registered temperatures below zero, while the northern city of La Quiaca on the border with Bolivia fell to minus 10 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit.) The average low predicated through Aug. 5 is 1 degree, according to the National Weather service.
Dow closed a polyethylene plant in July and reduced operations at another facility to minimum capacity after gas supplies were rationed by the government, said Soledad Echague, a spokeswoman for the Midland, Michigan-based company in Buenos Aires. The cuts were more severe than the company had expected, she said.
Power Purchases
“The situation should be under control, as long as the weather improves,” Horacio Mizrahi, a spokesman at Argentina’s Planning Ministry, which oversees the country’s energy policy, said in a July 27 telephone interview from Buenos Aires.
Aluar needs a constant supply of electricity at its 410,000 ton-per-year aluminum smelter in Argentina’s southern Chubut province. The company is buying power to keep the plant running during peak gas consumption hours this winter, a spokesman for the Buenos Aires-based company, who declined to be named under company policy, said in a July 26 telephone interview.
Siderar reduced production to a minimum during peak gas consumption hours in July, according to a company spokesman, who declined to be named, citing company policy.
Argentina has doubled purchases of LNG shipments to 14 this year to address the shortages. Each shipment equals 3 million British thermal units of the fuel. Seven ships were bought last year, according to government data compiled by the Argentine Oil and Gas Institute, an industry research group.
Reduced Supplies
About 300 hundred industrial users have faced reduced power supplies since yesterday, according to reports in local media, including newspaper Clarin, Argentina’s biggest newspaper, and television channel C5N. The cuts started after residential gas consumption rose 42 percent yesterday to 85 million cubic meters (3 billion cubic feet) from 60 million, Clarin reported today.
July and August are Argentina’s coldest months. The winter months have put stress on energy supplies since 2004, when economic growth of an average of 8.5 percent a year stoked demand and price caps on gas, oil and utility prices curtailed investments in the country’s fields and pipelines.
The energy shortages led to restrictions of exports to Chile, which obtained about 80 percent of its natural gas supplies from Argentina until 2009, when it opened the first of two LNG plants. A gas pipeline that links the two countries across the Andes mountains is now practically unused after Argentina curtailed exports to its Latin American neighbor.
Spot Cargo Purchases
Aside from the 14 ships bought through a bidding round earlier this year, Argentine state-owned energy company Enarsa bought at least one spot cargo of LNG this year from Ras Laffan Liquified Natural Gas Co., according to the Qatari company. Enarsa’s head of communications Carlos Davidson did not respond to emails to his office and a phone call seeking comment.
Argentina needs an extra 40 million cubic meters of natural gas to cover the shortages, according to the Mosconi Institute’s Rabinovich. The country uses about 120 million in winter, he said.
Argentina’s Energy Secretary this year hired YPF, a unit of Spain’s Repsol YPF SA, to install a second regasification ship, which will be located on the Parana river off the city of Escobar, in central Buenos Aires province.
The new ship will be located within a radius of less than 200 kilometers from steel plants operated by the Techint Group and Arcelor Mittal’s Argentine unit Acindar. Argentine grain and bean producers and exporters, such as Bunge Ltd. and Cargill Inc., the country’s two biggest exporters in 2009, also have operations in the region.
To contact the reporter on this story: Rodrigo Orihuela in Buenos Aires at rorihuela@bloomberg.net
A comprehensive list of the lies, disinformation and distortions spread by the climate alarmists. Visit site for for full list and links to each story.
No science produces more controversy, exaggerations, distortions, follies, and falsehoods than climate science does. In this new list we’ve got
94 climate-gates total
28 new gates
145 links to reports with details.
The new gates on the list are designated with “NEW!” to make them easy to spot. Thanks to a number of readers who have given me tips.
1. Acceleration of sea level rise-gate
Claims of accelerating sea level rise are misleading.
2. African agriculture claim-gate
IPCC wrongly claims that in some African countries yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 percent by 2020.
3. AIT-gate and British High Court
35 errors or gross exaggerations are found in Al Gore’s Oscar winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth.
4. NEW! Alaskan glaciers-gate
Loss of glaciers in Alaska was grossly exaggerated.
5. Amazon rainforest-gate and here (NEW!) and here (NEW!)
IPCC cites “robust” source: green activist organisation WWF. WWF’s source was merely an anonymous brief on forest fire risks posted in 1999 and taken down four years later.
6. Antarctic sea ice-gate
Antarctic sea ice underestimated by 50%.
7. NEW! Authoritarian science-gate
The science says… Science is increasingly used as an instrument of authority to impose public policy.
8. NEW! Australia-gate Australia temperature adjusted upwards to show more warming.
9. Bangladesh-gate
IPCC inflates Bangladesh doomsday forecasts in 2007 4AR.
10. NEW! Biofuel-gate
Efforts to save the planet by using bio-fuels are in fact rapidly destroying it.
11. NEW! Black list-gate and here, here and William Anderegg and here
Sceptic scientists are branded and listed by largely discredited, angry alarmist NAS scientists.
12. Boot-cleaning manual-gate
IPCC 4AR cites boot cleaning instructions of an Antarctica tour operator.
Chilly in Chile: South America Hit by Cold Snap
Updated: 1 day 11 hours ago
Theunis Bates Contributor
AOL News
(Aug. 6) -- The U.S. might be experiencing a hot, hot summer, but south of the border, things couldn't be more different. Latin America's southernmost regions are shivering through the coldest winter in decades, which has left vast swaths of Argentina and Brazil with snow, and caused millions of freshwater fish to freeze to death in Bolivia.
To get an idea of how unusual this icy snap is, you just have to take a look at the weather records of Argentina's capital Buenos Aires. It's snowed there three times since 1918 -- and two of those dustings have taken place in the past month. (The other was in July 2007). But while the city has gotten off relatively lightly during the current big freeze -- it's only experienced a light spattering of snow so far -- the country's Andean and Patagonian provinces have been buried under 3 feet of snow. Dozens of villages have been cut off by the vast drifts, which have killed an unknown number of livestock and ruined thousands of acres of crops.
To cope with this blast of icy Antarctic weather, Argentinians have cranked up their home heating systems, sending electricity demand to a new high. MercoPress reports that this record-breaking surge in demand caused a blackout that forced hundreds of industries to temporarily shut down.
The past week has also seen unprecedented amounts of snow fall across Brazil's southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul. Local TV stations have shown pictures of a thin white coating on the ground -- which counts as a drift by the tropical country's standards. Brazzil magazine noted that locals had been spotted making snowmen, and claimed that the state's metropolises were starting to resemble European cities in winter.
Bolivia and Chile have taken more of a beating. Temperatures in the eastern Bolivian province of Santa Cruz have repeatedly dropped below 32 degrees Fahrenheit during the past month -- the coldest temperatures there in half a century, according to UPI -- causing an estimated 6 million fish in the Grande, Pirai and Ichilo rivers to freeze to death. The province's governor has advised locals not to drink from the polluted water, in case they fall ill.
And Chile's capital Santiago had an average temperature of just over 42 degrees last month, according to the University of Chile, making it the city's chilliest July since 1908. The Santiago Times said one in three city dwellers had suffered a respiratory illnesses in the past four weeks -- which could have been caused by the increased use of shoddy gas or coal heaters, as well as exposure to the cold -- and reported that a record frost had wrecked avocado, orange and lemon crops. The paper says exports of these fruits are now expected to fall by up to 40 percent.
Official: Satellite Failure Means Decade of Global Warming Data Doubtful
Written by John O'Sullivan, special to Climate Change Fraud | 11 August 2010
US Government admits satellite temperature readings “degraded.” All data taken offline in shock move. Global warming temperatures may be 10 to 15 degrees too high.
The fault was first detected after a tip off from an anonymous member of the public to climate skeptic blog, Climate Change Fraud (view original article) (August 9, 2010).
Caught in the center of the controversy is the beleaguered taxpayer funded National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA’s Program Coordinator, Chuck Pistis has now confirmed that the fast spreading story on the respected climate skeptic blog is true.
However, NOAA spokesman, Program Coordinator, Chuck Pistis declined to state how long the fault might have gone undetected. Nor would the shaken spokesman engage in speculation as to the damage done to the credibility of a decade’s worth of temperature readings taken from the problematic ‘NOAA-16’ satellite.
‘NOAA-16’ was launched in September 2000, and is currently operational, in a sun-synchronous orbit, 849 km above the Earth, orbiting every 102 minutes providing automated data feed of surface temperatures which are fed into climate computer models.
NOAA has reported a succession of record warm temperatures in recent years based on such satellite readings but these may now all be undermined.
World-renowned Canadian climatologist, Dr. Timothy Ball, after casting his expert eye over the shocking findings concluded, “At best the entire incident indicates gross incompetence, at worst it indicates a deliberate attempt to create a temperature record that suits the political message of the day.”
Great Lakes Sees Unphysical Wild Temperature Fluctuations
Great Lakes users of the satellite service were the first to blow the whistle on the wildly distorted readings that showed a multitude of impossibly high temperatures. NOAA admits that the machine-generated readings are not continuously monitored so that absurdly high false temperatures could have become hidden amidst the bulk of automated readings.
In one example swiftly taken down by NOAA after my first article, readings for June and July 2010 for Lake Michigan showed crazy temperatures off the scale ranging in the low to mid hundreds - with some parts of the Wisconsin area apparently reaching 612 F. With an increasing number of further errors now coming to light the discredited NOAA removed the entire set from public view. But just removing them from sight is not the same as addressing the implications of this gross statistical debacle.
NOAA Whitewash Fails in One Day
NOAA’s Chuck Pistis went into whitewash mode on first hearing the story about the worst affected location, Egg Harbor, set by his instruments onto fast boil. On Tuesday morning Pistis loftily declared, “I looked in the archives and I find no image with that time stamp. Also we don't typically post completely cloudy images at all, let alone with temperatures. This image appears to be manufactured for someone's entertainment.”
But later that day Chuck and his calamitous colleagues now with egg on their faces, threw in the towel and owned up to the almighty gaffe. Pistis conceded,
“I just relooked and (sic) the image again AND IT IS in my archive. I do not know why the temperatures were so inaccurate (sic). It appears to have been a malfunction in the satellite. WE have posted thousands if (sic) images since the inauguration of our Coatwatch (sic) service in 1994. I have never seen one like this.”
But the spokesman for the Michigan Sea Grant Extension, a ‘Coastwatch’ partner with NOAA screening the offending data, then confessed that its hastily hidden web pages had, indeed, showed dozens of temperature recordings three or four times higher than seasonal norms. NOAA declined to make any comment as to whether such a glitch could have ramped up the averages for the entire northeastern United States by an average of 10-15 degrees Fahrenheit by going undetected over a longer time scale.
Somewhat more contritely NOAA's Pistis later went into damage limitation mode to offer his excuses,
“We need to do a better job screening what is placed in the archive or posted. Coastwatch is completely automated so you can see how something like this could slip through.”
In his statement Pistis agreed NOAA’s satellite readings were “degraded” and the administration will have to “look more into this.” Indeed, visitors to the Michigan Sea Grant site now see the following official message:
"NOTICE: Due to degradation of a satellite sensor used by this mapping product, some images have exhibited extreme high and low surface temperatures. “Please disregard these images as anomalies. Future images will not include data from the degraded satellite and images caused by the faulty satellite sensor will be/have been removed from the image archive.”
WRITTEN BY JOHN O'SULLIVAN, SPECIAL TO CLIMATE CHANGE FRAUD | 09 AUGUST 2010
UPDATE 8-10-2010: It would appear CoastWatch has removed the original image. Never fear, it's shown here on the right. Please see author's addendum at end of article.
Global warming data apparently cooked by U.S. government-funded body shows astounding temperature fraud with increases averaging 10 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit.
The tax-payer funded National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has become mired in fresh global warming data scandal involving numbers for the Great Lakes region that substantially ramp up averages.
A beleaguered federal agency appears to be implicated in the most blatant and extreme case of climate data fraud yet seen. Official records have been confirmed as evidence that a handful of temperature records for the Great Lakes region have been hiked up by literally hundreds of degrees to substantially inflate the average temperature range for the northeastern United States.
The web pages at the center of this latest climate storm were created by NOAA in partnership with Michigan State University.
Disgraced Administration Mired in Another Climategate-style Data Fix
Someone under the pseudonym ‘Sportsmen’ anonymously tipped off skeptic blog, Climatechangefraud.com. Independent analysts affirm the web pages as genuine.
In his email the faceless whistleblower explains that what precipitated the scoop was “a rather dubious report in the media that the Great Lakes temperatures have risen 10 to 15 degrees, I found it was downright laughable.” (Just a few examples of media hysteria here and here and here and here)
He continues, “ Prior to this report I would frequent the ‘Coastal Watch’ temperature maps for northern Lake Michigan. When this report came out it dawned on me that the numbers didn't match what I had been reading on the Coastal Watch temperature page.”
Under a scheme called ‘Sea Grant’ NOAA collaborates with national universities to compile an official federal temperature record. In this instance, the partnersip is with Michigan University’s ‘Coastal Watch.’
Together the two institutions show temperature maps for northern Lake Michigan registering an absurd 430 degrees Fahrenheit -yes, you read it right –that’s four hundred and thirty degrees-and this is by no means the highest temperature recorded on the charts.
In the heated debate about Earth’s ever-changing climate you certainly don’t need to be scientist to figure out that the Great Lakes would have boiled away at a mere 212 degrees so something has seriously gone awry inside this well-funded program.
In addition to its civilian employees, NOAA research and operations are supported by 300 uniformed service members who make up the NOAA Commissioned Officer Corps. But don’t bet on anyone being court-marshalled over this latest global warming fiasco.
Paid for entirely from federal taxes, the shamed public body’s key responsibilities include warning of dangerous weather and protection of ocean and coastal resources, and conducts research to improve understanding and stewardship of the environment.
Michigan State University Also Complicit in Fraud?
The worst evidence of hyper-inflated global warming data is on a web page entitled, ‘Michigan State University Remote Sensing & GIS Research and Outreach Services.’
While another web page identifies that Michigan State University’s ‘Coastal Watch’ site is officially connected to NOAA thus implicating both institutions in a climate data conspiracy. At the bottom of the web page mention is made of ‘Sea Grant’ that is described as a “unique partnership of public and private sectors that combines research, education and technology transfer for public service.“
The legend further boasts that such data is shared across “ a national network of universities meeting the changing environmental and economic needs of Americans in coastal ocean and Great Lakes regions.”
NOAA Makes it White Hot in Wisconsin
But our intrepid anonymous whistleblower wasn’t done yet. He pointed out that Egg Harbor, Wisconsin, really got cooking this July 4th around 9:59AM, according to NOAA and Coast Watch. It was there, at the bottom left row of the temperature data points, that the records reveal on that day a phenomenally furnace-like 600 degrees Fahrenheit. (Click here if CoastWatch link does not work or disappears)
Egg Harbor by Royalbroil
Further analysis of the web pages shows that the incredibly wide temperature swings were occurring in remarkably short 10-hour periods-and sometimes in less than 5 hours. Strangely, none of the 250 citizens of the 78 families living in the village appeared to notice this apocalyptic heatwave during their holiday festivities.
Hidden Data Spike Hikes Heating Averages
But our sharp-eyed stranger comments, “ As I understand it, the current available Gif data maps are several for the latest dates, but the archives have less dates to choose from. It's possible that in the past these numbers were incorrect but in the archive system you do not see the numbers that could have been in gross error.”
So it may reasonably be inferred climate fraudsters had a perfect opportunity here to fraudulently apply overcooked and overlooked data so that America’s Joe Public would be none the wiser that a few climate numbers vastly ramped up the national temperature averages.
Laughably, NOAA publishes a caveat at the bottom right corner of their web page warning about their data is “Not to be used for navigation purposes!”
The current head of NOAA is Dr. Jane Lubchenco, nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the United States Senate on March 19, 2009 and is the first woman to serve as NOAA administrator. On her appointment Lubchenco declared that science would guide the agency and that she expects it to play a role in developing a green economy. You can say that again!
Readers now interested in doing their own detective work may wish to peruse the further data found here and here
to further ascertain whether climate doomsayers have rigged more ‘real world’ temperatures in a shabby scheme to win support for green energy tax hikes. If you find anything be sure to drop Lubchenco a line here.
Author's Addendum:
Of major concern here is whether the false data has been fed into climate models ascertaining the broader temperature averages for the entire United States. The alleged response from NOAA as shown in the comments below this article, indicates evasiveness by Chuck Pistis, NOAA Program Coordinator, in answering the question. Why so?
I also applied due diligence and asked internationally renowned climatologist, Dr. Timothy Ball to take a look at the numbers. Here is what Dr. Ball observed:
have read your article and believe it is a very valid observation of the data as reported. At best the entire incident indicates gross incompetence, at worst it indicates a deliberate attempt to create a temperature record that suits the political message of the day."
Moreover, I have written to NOAA but am still awaiting their reply. I specifically asked whether this extravagantly false data was fed into climate models to help ramp up the U.S. climate numbers by "400%" as commented on by analyst, Jo Nova (more here). The Australian researcher provides an excellent summary to an important paper that removes all doubt that climate models are utterly flawed. As Dr. Ball points out—perhaps we know why.
John O'Sullivan is a legal analyst, author and journalist. As an accredited academic, John taught and lectured for over twenty years at schools and colleges in the east of England before moving to the United States. As an analytical commentator, O'Sullivan has published over 100 major articles worldwide.
_________________ 'Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help, help, I'm being repressed!'
“The more you tighten your grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your fingers.”
Ice Capades – New Iceberg Not What It is “Cracked Up” To Be
Posted on August 13, 2010 by Anthony Watts
By Steve Goddard
Readers will surely recall when WUWT was the first climate news outlet to publish this story:
Oh no! Greenland glacier calves island 4 times the size of Manhattan
In it, an admonition: “Watch the media now as this story is only about an hour old.” So far the media (and foot in mouth politicians) haven’t disappointed in their zeal to make this “business as usual” for a glacier into a poster child.
Professor Andreas Muenchow became a media celebrity this week with his quote about an iceberg in Greenland being “four times the size of Manhattan.” This iceberg has become a poster child for global warming, even though a much larger one broke off the same glacier 50 years ago.
From the Kansas City Star
Researchers last week spotted a 100-square-mile chunk of ice that calved off from the great Petermann Glacier in Greenland’s far northwest. It was the most massive ice island to break away in the Arctic in a half-century of observation. The huge iceberg appeared just five months after an international scientific team published a report saying ice loss from the Greenland ice sheet is expanding up its northwest coast from the south. Changes in the ice sheet “are happening fast, and we are definitely losing more ice mass than we had anticipated,” said NASA’s Isabella Velicogna.
Others took the misinformation one step further:
In what he calls ‘a manifestation of warming’, Dr Richard Bates who helps monitor the Greenland ice said he was ‘amazed’ to see such a huge area of ice break off the Petermann glacier. Reported in the Telegraph a team from the University of St Andrews said that a huge 106 square mile chunk of ice had broken away at the start of August. This is the largest ever seen to come from Greenland. The US National Ice Center has named the iceberg the ‘Petermann Ice Island’. They also report that the Petermann glacier, which is located in North West Greenland to the East of the Nares Strait and one of the largest in the Northern hemisphere, has retreated back to a level not observed since 1962.
What the press is not widely reporting is that Professor Muenchow also said :
years of data on the glacier itself show that after this month’s event, the mass of ice is still, on average, discharging about the same amount of water it usually does – some 600 million cubic meters a year, or about 220,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. “Even a big piece like this over 50 years is not that significant. It’s just the normal rate,” he said. Muenchow warns people not to jump to conclusions. “An event like this, this specific event, all flags go immediately up, ‘Oh, let’s explain this by global warming.’ I cannot support that,” he said.
So what we know is that the glacier is where it was 50 years ago, a bigger chunk broke off 50 years ago, and the rate of ice moving to the sea has not changed. There is absolutely no story here. Our warming friends get more desperate by the day. It is pathetic.
Top Climate Scientists Speak out on the Satellitegate Scandal
By John O'Sullivan Monday, August 16, 2010
US Government admits global warming satellite sensors “degraded” - temperatures may be out by 10-15 degrees. Now five satellites in controversy. Top scientists speak out.
In an escalating row dubbed ‘Satellitegate’ further evidence proves NOAA knew of these faults for years. World’s top climate scientists and even prior governmental reports cite underfunding and misallocation as the trigger for spiraling satellite data calamities. Key flaws with five satellites undermines global data.
Most disturbing of all is that it took publication of my article last week to persuade the authorities to withdraw the errant NOAA-16 satellite from service. But as Dr. John Christy indicates, the real Satellitegate is not about one satellite. The scandal is endemic with comparable flaws across the entire network; the scandal is also that it took a tip off from a member of the public and the widespread broadcast of my article before one of the offending junk boxes, NOAA-16, got taken down.
Readers who missed the details when this sensational story first broke can see here at Climatedepot.com.
NOAA’s chief Program Administrator, Chuck Pistis, at first disingenuously tried to discredit my report and whitewash the matter with disinformation. Indeed, we may have a smoking gun of a cover up when we contrast and compare latest announcements with the offending satellite’s AVHRR Subsystem Summary.
The official summary shows no report of any ‘sensor degradation’ since its launch in September 2000. Yet on the advice of top climate scientists I’m reliably informed that such failures were made known to NOAA years ago.
Nonetheless, the U.S. agency continued to sell its flawed data products to numerous international institutions without making it public that satellite sensors were “degraded” and unreliable for assessing climate change.
NOAA-16 had been commissioned as a polar-orbiting satellite featuring AMSU, AVHRR and High Resolution Infrared Radiation Sounder (HIRS) measuring instrumentation which were discovered by a member of the public last week to have suffered catastrophic failure. Dr John Christy drew my attention to specific concomitant flaws he had uncovered and reported with the AMSU years ago.
NOAA in Fear of Rush of International Lawsuits?
The snuffed out satellite had been run continuously up until being taken offline soon after my article went viral (August 10, 2010) in which I exposed the full extent of how seriously degraded it’s sensors were. The automatic readings had been contaminated by hundreds, if not thousands, of false and absurdly high temperature readings, some as high as 612 degrees Fahrenheit (boiling point of water is 212 F.). We now know NOAA was aware of these outrageous anomalies at least since 2006 but they were not remedied ( see below).
Worryingly, as to how many of its users (mostly international meteorologists and climate researchers) were affected has not beent revealed by NOAA. But we know the automated numbers were sold throughout the world and it’s readings of land and ocean temperatures have been used by climate scientists in their models since the satellite’s launch in September 2000. As a consequence and without full disclosure by NOAA, it is feared innumerable scientific studies about rising global temperatures are now rendered entirely invalid.
It is open to speculation whether NOAA may have been hesitant to admit to long standing faults for fear of a rash of lawsuits from its customers, mainly national governments and university research institutes. Based on such data most scientists agree that our planet may have warmed by 0.6 degrees Centigrade during the 20th century (with a margin of error of 0.5C degrees-but this error margin now looks way off).
From analysis of the bogus online temperature data before NOAA removed it from view, it may be determined that almost all the false temperature readings were far in excess of expected averages—many by a factor of four or five - almost none of the bogus temperatures were lower than average.
US Government Foresaw Satelligate Failures Mounting
But it wasn’t just a handful of skeptical climatologists sounding the alarm. The National Academy of Sciences, in its 2007 455-page report concluded that because of degradation in the U.S. satellite network, the country’s ability to monitor the climate and severe weather was “at great risk.”
By coincidence, in the same week my article led to the shut down of NOAA-16, Susan Bohan published her excellent article here in which she exposes the broader systemic failures in the wider satellite network. Among the calamities Bohan reported, “the satellite, Landsat 7, is broken. And it’s emblematic of the nation’s battered satellite environmental monitoring program.”
The term ‘satelligate’ was coined by the CO2insanity.com blog after it diligently picked up on the piece.
At Least Five Climate Measuring Satellites Compromised
Crucially, Bohan’s article wasn’t based on any so-called unsubstantiated ‘big oil’ funded skeptic disinformation plot, a dying urban myth anyway, but on a US Government Accountability Office report (GAO). GAO concedes that nine new climate instruments on the latest generation of satellites were canceled or their capabilities scaled back in 2006. GAO is the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress.
As a consequence at least five such satellite programs have been identified as being either degraded or seriously compromised:
* Landsat 7 (currently in orbit) is broken leaving data gaps. Scientists do not get all the information they should.
* NPOESS (National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite) will not have any sensors that measure the sun’s energy output on the 2nd and 4th satellites.
* GOES-R (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R Series) has had 14 sensors cancelled. No data for cloud base height, ozone layer, ocean color, ocean turbidity and cloud imagery, snow cover, etc. Effectively neutered.
* No sensor for movement of greenhouse gases and pollutants. No sensor to monitor temperature changes on Earth over time. (NOAA didn’t even bother to try to get the funding to keep the eliminated sensors!).
* The sensor to measure how Earth’s temperature reacts to changes in Solar energy was cancelled by the Obama Administration at the end of June 2010.
Perhaps its no accident that the current head of NOAA, Dr. Jane Lubchenco and hand picked by President Barack Obama, declared that her agency would play its role in developing a green economy.
Thus, despite the US Government spending in excess of $80 billion in climate research a failure to allocate sufficient funds to the satellite program has now resulted in serious damage to the credibility of the entire data set (note: the cost of a typical NOAA satellite is around $11 million and the network recoups the US government millions by selling data worldwide).
Evidence from Climate Experts Points to Conspiracy to Deceive
Dr. Roy Spencer commented, “Obviously, whatever happened to NOAA-16 AVHRR (or the software) introduced HUGE errors. We always had trouble with NOAA-16 AMSU, and dropped it long ago. It had calibration drifts that made it unsuitable for climate monitoring.”
Dr Christy particularly addressed faults exclusively with the AMSU instrumentation and not problems with the AVHRR system. He advised me, “We spent a lot of time in 2006 trying to deal with the issues of NOAA-16, but the errors were so erratic, we ended up eliminating it as one of the backbones of our dataset.”
As many such analysts have long been advising, these failures go way beyond the shockingly absurd numbers of 604 degrees recorded at Egg harbor, Wisconsin.
Dr. Timothy Ball, climate consultant to the military and lead author of a new book debunking the greenhouse gas theory, observes, “At best the entire incident indicates gross incompetence, at worst it indicates a deliberate attempt to create a temperature record that suits the political message of the day.”
Mainstream Media Turn Blind Eye to Another ‘Gate’ Scandal
In 2006 Christy and Spencer had sought to complete a technical analysis on NOAA-16’s AMSU but Christy reveals that it, “was very tedious and we chased a lot of rabbits that turned out to be dead ends.”
Such appalling facts just don’t appear in the ‘on message’ mainstream media and all the while researchers have been struggling in vain to keep pace with the ever-increasing numbers gap due to ongoing sensor degradation. For example, each month Dr. Christy works with Dr. Spencer trying to piece together the faltering patchwork of global temperature datasets given by a total of eleven instruments flying on eleven different satellites since 1979.
Over such a long time period it has been suggested that cosmic rays or particle impacts may be deteriorating the highly sensitive instrumentation on board the crafts.
Spencer publishes his findings on his blog while a fuller assessment of the satellite problems found by Dr. Christy is found here.
Will Systemic Measuring Failures Cost Even more Lives?
Respected internationally for his world leading weather forecasts, Piers Corbyn, of Weatheraction.com is another expert lamenting the scandalous failures in the satellite network.
Piers thundered on the Climate Realists blog, “This revelation further confirms something I and Tom Harris said on Russia Today TV Feb (5th) 2010 namely that WE JUST DO NOT reliably KNOW what world temperatures are and have been doing over the last decade or century.”
Corbyn had correctly forecast this summer’s West Russia heatwave and a general increase in VERY extreme events (evidenced by Pakistan & China horrendous floods and “super cold” in parts of S hemisphere) weeks and months in advance.
A Growing List of Global Warming Satellite Measuring Failures
Satelligate points to yet another infuriating government cover up of fudged global warming numbers. Despite the clamor for years from scientists from all sides of the global warming debate for more transparency and better access to such data, zealous gatekeepers within NASA and Britain’s CRU have refused such requests and unlawfully defied Freedom of Information (FOIA) demands.
As indicated on WattsupWithThat such errors and deficiencies along with plain old-fashioned data fraud have long been swept under the carpet with ever more lives put at risk.
Indeed, public confidence in the reliability of official warnings of apocalyptic doom from purveyors of NOAA’s trumpeted fake data has been met with increasing cynicism. A growing number of taxpayers are voicing opposition to the zealous rush towards crippling tax hikes dismantling first world standards of living without first having ascertained the proper facts.
Questions NOAA Refuses to Answer
In light of concerns that NOAA has officially admitted to only withdrawing “images” from its archives without confirming all bogus data has also been dumped, I posed the following and yet unanswered questions to NOAA’s Dr. Jane Lubchenco:
* What steps have you taken to ascertain the scope and extent of this data error and what action will be taken to avoid further recurrence?
* Have you identified whether these temperature anomalies impact other data sets and findings; in particular does this undermine in any way the credibility of official government statements already made about climatic changes, and if so by how much?
Until Lubchenco comes clean I fear we may be witnessing another ‘Phil Jones’ in the making. For without full transparency and frank answers then the endless media hype about the dangers from the so-called ‘greenhouse gas theory’ remains just that—hype.
Why Warming Is Falsely Reported When World Is Cooling
By Dr. Tim Ball Monday, August 16, 2010
Finally, a weather person has mentioned the word “blocking” when talking about the heat and fires in Moscow. It’s a natural event as the world shifts from the warming trend of the 1990s to a cooling trend since 2000. Distortion of reality about global temperatures continues with warming claims while Western North America, most of Eurasia and large areas of the southern hemisphere report below normal temperatures. It’s been the coldest summer on record north of 80°N latitude and rate of sea ice melt continues to decrease.
Recently the Peruvian government declared a state of emergency as hundreds of people died from the coldest temperatures in 50 years.
Fifty years ago there was a cooling trend as global temperatures declined from 1940 to 1980. It troubled promoters of human CO2 as the cause of global warming. During the cooling period, CO2 from human activity increased the most in human history. They tried to solve the problem by plugging variables into the models until results equaled what was happening. It has nothing to do with reality, but allows them to claim their models work because they recreate past conditions. It’s even better if the cause has a human source. In the 1940–80 cooling, they added sulfates. Trouble is sulfate additions continued but global temperatures began to rise.
Obsession with finding human causes means they ignore what we know about natural mechanisms. Failure to include natural mechanisms is complicated by lack of knowledge or understanding of weather and climate mechanisms by most involved in the politics of climate science.
Legal verdict: Manmade global warming science doesn’t withstand scrutiny
Lawrence Solomon June 6, 2010 – 10:47 pm
A cross examination of global warming science conducted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Law and Economics has concluded that virtually every claim advanced by global warming proponents fails to stand up to scrutiny.
The cross-examination, carried out by Jason Scott Johnston, Professor and Director of the Program on Law, Environment and Economy at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, found that “on virtually every major issue in climate change science, the [reports of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] and other summarizing work by leading climate establishment scientists have adopted various rhetorical strategies that seem to systematically conceal or minimize what appear to be fundamental scientific uncertainties or even disagreements.”
Professor Johnson, who expressed surprise that the case for global warming was so weak, systematically examined the claims made in IPCC publications and other similar work by leading climate establishment scientists and compared them with what is found in the peer-edited climate science literature. He found that the climate establishment does not follow the scientific method. Instead, it “seems overall to comprise an effort to marshal evidence in favor of a predetermined policy preference.”
The 79-page document, which effectively eviscerates the case for man-made global warming, can be found here.
Financial Post
LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe the author of The Deniers.
08/16/2010...8:59 AM
Satellitegate: Scientists Speak
From John O’Sullivan, via Canada Free Press, we get further information on Satellitegate. Satellitegate refers to problems that have been discovered with old satellites, satellite data, and even problems with satellites that have yet to be launched. This evidently has caused lots of action about this at NASA, NOAA, GISS and elsewhere.
In his article titled “Top Scientists Speak out on the Satellitegate Scandal” you can read about how this being exposed has affected things and some opinions of some scientists. It appears that one satellite has been shuttered and datasets may be disappearing.
Climate change sceptics in New Zealand are taking the government's climate agency to court over the validity of its evidence on global warming.
The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition has accused the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research of tampering with official weather records to make the case for global warming.
In a move that has been heavily criticised by several top scientists, the group is mounting a high court challenge to the country's official temperature record.
The Coalition's chairman Barry Brill says the calculations are wrong and should not be relied upon.
"In terms of the New Zealand temperature record I'm saying that's totally inaccurate and needs to be completely vacated and redone," he said.
"One of the most important facts in the whole debate is what's been happening in the past and in our country that record is wrong."
Several of New Zealand's climate change scientists say the temperature records show a clear warming trend consistent with what has been measured by thousands of meteorological stations around the world.
A spokesman for the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research said the agency is confident that its science will be fully vindicated.
Court challenge to Niwa 'stupid'
NZPA
Last updated 09:14 16/08/2010
Court action against New Zealand's state-owned weather and atmospheric research body is "stupid" and just creating confusion, University of Otago pro-vice chancellor of sciences Keith Hunter says.
The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa) is being taken to court in a challenge over the accuracy of its data used to calculate global warming.
The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition said it had lodged papers with the High Court asking the court to invalidate Niwa's official temperature records.
The lobby of climate sceptics and the ACT Party have long criticised Niwa over its temperature data, which Niwa says is mainstream science and not controversial, and the raw data publicly available.
Coalition spokesman Bryan Leyland said many scientists believed although the earth had been warming for 150 years, it had not heated as much as claimed.
He said the New Zealand Meteorological Service had shown no warming during the past century but Niwa had adjusted its records to show a warming trend of 1degC. The warming figure was high and almost 50 percent above the global average, said Mr Leyland.
The coalition said the 1degC warming during the 20th century was based on adjustments taken by Niwa from a 1981 student thesis by then student Jim Salinger, a Niwa employee who was later sacked after talking to the news media without permission.
But Prof Hunter told Radio New Zealand the courts could not determine whether or not the adjusted records had been adjusted properly.
"It can only be done by people who have an established scientific reputation in meteorology. So if the coalition has got those people they should do the analysis. If they haven't they should find someone else who has got that.
"There is nothing sinister about making adjustments. Measurements are often adjusted because of procedural differences between stations or changes in instruments with time.
"The coalition are just creating confusion. Throwing mud and if they throw enough mud some will stick and organisations like Niwa get dragged down in it," Prof Hunter said.
Meanwhile, the Environmental Defence Society (EDS) said in a statement that it may join court action in support of Niwa.
EDS chairman Gary Taylor said the society was evaluating whether there was merit in joining the proceedings.
"On the face of it, it's hard to see how the issue can properly be brought before the court. We have no doubts that the science behind global warming predictions is robust and reliable and would wish to support the institute in any way that we can.
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"It is one thing to have a robust debate about the science and quite another to attempt to belittle and undermine the need for action, as the coalition has been doing now for years," Mr Taylor said.
The coalition will ask the court to find Niwa's New Zealand temperature record (NZTR) invalid.
It would also seek a court declaration preventing Niwa from using the NZTR when it advised the Government or any other body on global climate issues. It would also ask the court to order Niwa to produce a full and accurate NZTR.
Some people just don't know the difference between climate and weather!! More of Russia is experiencing below average temperatures than above-average but that's not any good for the alarmists!!
Russian Scientist: Extreme Central Russian Heat Wave Not An Indication Of A Future Climate Catastrophe
By P Gosselin on 12. August 2010
Time to calm down everybody.
A Russian scientist says the regional heat wave taking place in Russia is not a sign of catastrophic climate change and that the permafrost has been thawing since the last ice age 10,000 years ago, and its rate of thawing is also not catastrophic.
This is what the German edition of the Russian online Ria Novosti writes here.
It’s more just a temporary natural occurrence, says Michail Kabanov, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences and advisor of the Institute For Climate And Environmental Monitoring.
According to Michail Kabanov:
Deviations in one direction or the other, in this region or the other, are explained completely by the instability of the climate system. It meanders constantly and reaches various anomalies as a result, and does include extremes. The weather conditions of this year are precisely a result of this.
Scientists must still determine if this anomaly is part of a trend in one direction, i.e. global warming, or if it’s just another climate fluctuation says the scientist. According to Ria Novosti:
The earth also experienced climate warming in the past, which was then followed by cooling. The question is: To what extent does the anthropogenic factor effect the fluctuations?
Kabanow says the current drought is not the start of a future catastrophe. Rather it is simply one extreme event that rarely occurs.
Michail Kabanow also says the thawing of the permafrost also poses no threat to man. The permafrost has been thawing since the last ice age 10,000 years ago. The rate of thawing is by no means catastrophic.
The expert sees no approaching global catastrophe.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Paper: Sea Level Rise Not Accelerating
A paper published yesterday in the Journal of Geophysical Research - Oceans, confirms other studies of tide gauge records which show that there has been no statistically significant acceleration in sea level rise over the past 100+ years, in contrast to statements of the IPCC and Al Gore. Sea levels have been rising naturally since the peak of the last major ice age 20,000 years ago, and the rate of rise began to decelerate about 8,000 years ago:
OURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 115, C08013, 15 PP., 2010
Reconstruction of regional mean sea level anomalies from tide gauges using neural networks
Authors: Manfred Wenzel, Jens Schröter
The 20th century regional and global sea level variations are estimated based on long-term tide gauge records. For this the neural network technique is utilized that connects the coastal sea level with the regional and global mean via a nonlinear empirical relationship. Two major difficulties are overcome this way: the vertical movement of tide gauges over time and the problem of what weighting function to choose for each individual tide gauge record. Neural networks are also used to fill data gaps in the tide gauge records, which is a prerequisite for our analysis technique. A suite of different gap-filling strategies is tested which provides information about stability and variance of the results. The global mean sea level for the period January 1900 to December 2006 is estimated to rise at a rate of 1.56 ± 0.25 mm/yr which is reasonably consistent with earlier estimates, but we do not find significant acceleration. The regional mean sea level of the single ocean basins show mixed long-term behavior. While most of the basins show a sea level rise of varying strength there is an indication for a mean sea level fall in the southern Indian Ocean. Also for the the tropical Indian and the South Atlantic no significant trend can be detected. Nevertheless, the South Atlantic as well as the tropical Atlantic are the only basins that show significant acceleration. On shorter timescales, but longer than the annual cycle, the basins sea level are dominated by oscillations with periods of about 50–75 years and of about 25 years. Consequently, we find high (lagged) correlations between the single basins.
Note: The 1.56 mm/yr non-accelerating rate of sea level rise would result in sea levels 6 inches higher than the present in 100 years. The oscillations noted in this study correspond to the typical full and half-cycle lengths of the natural Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the natural 60-year climate cycle. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation warm phase has been shown to produce a marked temporary rise in global mean sea levels.
Posted by MS at 10:04 AM [/quote]
NOAA: Warmest June Ever! Caveat: We Made It Up (Corrected)
NOAA and GISS claim a warm Arctic region made this June a record-breaker. They don't have a single thermometer in the Arctic!
August 15, 2010 - by Art Horn
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) claimed that this past June was the warmest ever in its temperature records, which go back to 1880. The global average temperature in June was 61.1 degrees, or 1.22 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average of 59.9 degrees. At face value, this appears to be consistent with the theory that global warming is caused by mankind’s use of fossil fuels. But face value can be deceiving, and the value is not what it appears to be.
In fact, the claim that June 2010 was the warmest on record has no value at all.
NOAA gets its temperature data from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. They calculate the average temperature of the Earth using data from land-based thermometers and ocean buoy and ship measurements of water temperature. However, there is a major problem with how GISS measures temperature in a very large region — the Arctic.
The problem is that they don’t have any thermometers there. So they make it up. No, really!
Despite this lack of arctic temperature data, GISS shows that this June the area north of eighty degrees latitude was up to four degrees warmer than the long-term average. You must be asking: how can GISS show any temperature readings at all north of eighty degrees if they don’t have any data? Really, I’m not kidding — they make it up.
GISS uses measured temperature data from lower latitudes and then extrapolates them to the Arctic. Using this method, any readings warmer than average in the lower latitudes are pushed into the Arctic by a smoothing technique. GISS uses a 1,200 kilometer smoothing for its data, meaning that the temperature reading for one thermometer is used as the temperature for a 1,200 kilometer box in all directions from that location. Where there are more thermometers, the boxes overlap, and the readings of one thermometer are averaged with others around them. This reduces the effect of each individual thermometer.
But in data-sparse regions, the value of one thermometer takes on a much greater value.
Guest commentary by Barry R. Bickmore, Brigham Young University
If you look around the websites dedicated to debunking mainstream climate science, it is very common to find Lord Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount of Brenchley, cited profusely. Indeed, he has twice testified about climate change before committees of the U.S. Congress, even though he has no formal scientific training. But if he has no training, why has he become so influential among climate change contrarians? After examining a number of his claims, I have concluded that he is influential because he delivers “silver bullets,” i.e., clear, concise, and persuasive arguments. The trouble is his compelling arguments are often constructed using fabricated facts. In other words, he makes it up. (Click here to see a number of examples by John Abraham, here for a few by myself, and here for some by Tim Lambert).
Here I’m going to examine some graphs that Lord Monckton commonly uses to show that the IPCC has incorrectly predicted the recent evolution of global atmospheric CO2 concentration and mean temperature. A number of scientists have already pointed out that Monckton’s plots of “IPCC predictions” don’t correspond to anything the IPCC ever predicted. For example, see comments by Gavin Schmidt (Monckton’s response here,) John Nielsen-Gammon (Monckton’s response here,) and Lucia Liljegren. Monckton is still happily updating and using the same graphs of fabricated data, so why am I bothering to re-open the case?
My aim is to more thoroughly examine how Lord Monckton came up with the data on his graphs, compare it to what the IPCC actually has said, and show exactly where he went wrong, leaving no excuse for anyone to take him seriously about this issue.
More »
Quote:
The Key to the Secrets of the Troposphere
Quote:
2
chek says:
13 August 2010 at 9:56 AM
“Infrared radiation is carried slowly aloft by air currents”
It’s resting, probably on account of it being so shagged out after its long journey and pining for the sun.
?
Quote:
13
Ike Solem says:
13 August 2010 at 1:00 PM
Some key issues on water vapor and hydrology:
1) Polewards expansion of both the subtropical dry zones and the jet stream.
Could that have played a role in the intensity of the Great Russian Heat Wave of 2010? Seems likely, and it also seems likely that this “once every 500 years event” will become a one-every-five years event under warming scenarios – just like the record flooding events seen recently.
CNN, the BBC, and numerous other outlets that tried to blame the jet stream for crisis in Russia and Pakistan all neglected to mention this issue:
Jet Streams Are Shifting And May Alter Paths Of Storms And Hurricanes, ScienceDaily (Apr. 17, 2008)
Faster Atmospheric Warming In Subtropics Pushes Jet Streams Toward Poles ScienceDaily (May 26, 2006)
CNN did fire their entire science team for covering starving polar bears in Alaska, so it’s no wonder that they’re trying to spin down any link to global warming, along with numerous other press outlets. Instead, they’re going to do another “in-depth” ClimateGate special.
2) Regional and global shifts in aerosols and lower tropospheric water vapor. In thinking about water vapor, it helps to consider lower and upper tropospheric water vapor (and stratospheric water vapor, and ozone) separately. Here’s a paper on the topic worth examining:
How much water vapour do you release when you burn fossil fuels? does the greenhouse effect really exist? Can we go on deforesting at the current rate?
James Cameron—King of Hypocrites
Written by Ann McElhinney
Sunday, 22 August 2010 17:49
Last March James Cameron sounded defiant.
The Avatar director was determined to expose journalists, such as myself, who thought it was important to ask questions about climate change orthodoxy and the radical "solutions" being proposed.
Cameron said was itching to debate the issue and show skeptical journalists and scientists that they were wrong.
“I want to call those deniers out into the street at high noon and shoot it out with those boneheads," he said in an interview.
Well, a few weeks ago Mr. Cameron seemed to honor his word.
His representatives contacted myself and two other well known skeptics, Marc Morano of the Climate Depot website and Andrew Breitbart, the new media entrepreneur.
Mr. Cameron was attending the AREDAY environmental conference in Aspen Colorado 19-22 August. He wanted the conference to end with a debate on climate change. Cameron would be flanked with two scientists. It would be 90 minutes long. It would be streamed live on the internet.
They hoped the debate would attract a lot of media coverage.
"We are delighted to have Fox News, Newsmax, The Washington Times and anyone else you'd like. The more the better," one of James Cameron's organizers said in an email.
It looked like James Cameron really was a man of his word who would get to take on the skeptics he felt were so endangering humanity.
Everyone on our side agreed with their conditions. The debate was even listed on the AREDAY agenda.
But then as the debate approached James Cameron's side started changing the rules.
They wanted to change their team. We agreed.
They wanted to change the format to less of a debate—to "a roundtable". We agreed.
Then they wanted to ban our cameras from the debate. We could have access to their footage. We agreed.
Bizarrely, for a brief while, the worlds most successful film maker suggested that no cameras should be allowed-that sound only should be recorded. We agreed
Then finally James Cameron, who so publicly announced that he "wanted to call those deniers out into the street at high noon and shoot it out," decided to ban the media from the shoot out.
He even wanted to ban the public. The debate/roundtable would only be open to those who attended the conference.
No media would be allowed and there would be no streaming on the internet. No one would be allowed to record it in any way.
We all agreed to that.
And then, yesterday, just one day before the debate, his representatives sent an email that Mr. "shoot it out " Cameron no longer wanted to take part. The debate was cancelled.
James Cameron's behavior raises some very important questions.
Does he genuinely believe in man made climate change? If he believes it is a danger to humanity surely he should be debating the issue every chance he gets ?
Or is it just a pose?
The man who called for an open and public debate at "high noon" suddenly doesn't want his policies open to serious scrutiny.
I was looking forward to debating with the film maker. I was looking forward to finding out where we agreed and disagreed and finding a way forward that would help the poorest people in the developing and developed world.
But that is not going to happen because somewhere along the way James Cameron, a great film maker, has moved from King of the World to being King of the Hypocrites.
Some people find it hard to admit they were wrong!!
South Pacific sea levels – Best records show little or no rise?!
Are the small islands of the South Pacific in danger of disappearing, glug, under the waves of the rising ocean? Will thousands of poor inhabitants be forced to emigrate, as desperate refugees, to Australia and New Zealand? Has any of this got anything to do with man-made emissions of CO2?
By looking closely at the records, it turns out that the much advertised rising sea levels in the South Pacific depend on anomalous depressions of the ocean during 1997 and 1998 thanks to an El Nino and two tropical cyclones. The Science and Public Policy Institute has released a report by Vincent Gray which compares 12 Pacific Island records and shows that in many cases it’s these anomalies that set the trends… and if the anomaly is removed, sea levels appear to be more or less constant since the Seaframe measurements began around 1993.
It's Official: NOAA Finds That Russian Heat Wave Was 100% Natural - CO2 Warming Not Even A Factor
Read here. Here and here are prior postings on the heat wave. Of course, an actual scientific finding like this crushes the hopes of liberal-left politicians, celebrities and the MSM reporters/pundits everywhere. They are so enamored with the global-warming meme, they literally blame any (every?) earthly condition on it. (Honestly, are leftists/liberals just more susceptible to mass group stupidity?)
As a plus, when you read the article, especially note how the hysteria of global warming brings out the extreme stupidity of left-wing organizations, such as the Pew Center on Climate Change and their in-house climate "scientist." Yikes, don't pay to hear this dufus speak on climate.
NOAA's statement:
"...greenhouse gas forcing fails to explain the 2010 heat wave over western Russia. The natural process of atmospheric blocking, and the climate impacts induced by such blocking, are the principal cause for this heat wave. It is not known whether, or to what extent, greenhouse gas emissions may affect the frequency or intensity of blocking during summer. It is important to note that observations reveal no trend in a daily frequency of July blocking over the period since 1948, nor is there an appreciable trend in the absolute values of upper tropospheric summertime heights over western Russia for the period since 1900. The indications are that the current blocking event is intrinsic to the natural variability of summer climate in this region, a region which has a climatological vulnerability to blocking and associated heat waves (e.g., 1960, 1972, 1988)."
Update: Another example of natural heat waves, which occur without any help from the trace gas CO2.
Update: More detail - "There is strong evidence that the immediate cause can be placed at the doorstep of an extreme pattern of atmospheric winds—widely referred to as blocking....."In many ways,the heat wave is a “black swan” event in that it is well beyond the normal expectations in the instrumental record.....There is strong evidence that the immediate cause can be placed at the doorstep of an extreme pattern of atmospheric winds—widely referred to as blocking.....Blocks are not an uncommon occurrence over Eurasia in summer, with a episodes of July blocking in the region between 0-60°E evident during the past half century. This region is vulnerable to episodes of blocking owing to physical factors related to the region’s location downstream of the Atlantic westerly jet."
Update: Uh-oh...the liberal elites are mounting a response - leftist/progressive "scholar" claims U.S. used its climate-change weapons against Russia...it's only a matter of time before elite Democrats claim "BUSH CAUSED IT!"
Update: Where and when were the ten deadliest forest fires? (Another heart breaker for leftist/progressive coalition for AGW-caused disasters.) h/t: Tom Nelson
In a program devoted to exposing the roots of the global warming scandal, Sean Hannity will feature author Brian Sussman tonight on his Fox News program.
"This is the show Al Gore doesn't want America to see," said Sussman, author of the best-selling WNB Books titled, "Climategate: A Veteran Meteorologist Expose the Global Warming Scam."
Hannity also will include a host of climate scientists who claim the science cited to support global warming trends is fraudulent.
"This is the television program that will pound the final nail into global warming's coffin," said Sussman. "Sean and his team at Fox News approached me earlier this summer, asking me to play a significant role in the show. Sean knows that my book reveals the Marxist foundation of fraud upon which the climate-change movement is built. He also knows that in 'Climategate' I call out the perpetrators of this con by name – and that's exactly what Sean will do tonight on national television."
Along with Sussman, the hour-long special, titled "The Green Swindle," will include a rare interview with the two acclaimed researchers who "broke the crafty code used to fabricate the bogus hockey stick temperature graph used by Gore in 'An Inconvenient Truth,'" said Sussman. This measure also is cited by the United Nations, and the federal government, added Sussman, "to scare Americans into believing that they're experiencing the hottest weather ever."
Hannity will report on those damning e-mails that leaked from the infamous Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the U.K. The e-mails revealed that influential climate scientists were involved in a manipulation scheme to alter the world's temperature record, inspiring the Climategate moniker.
Sussman contends a CRU insider purposefully leaked the emails. "Clearly someone inside CRU was sick of the scam being conducted from within the hallowed halls of this once prestigious research institution," he said. "They blew the whistle to alert the world that political activists with Ph.D.s were using their academic cover to manipulate data and professionally blackball scientists with opposing points of view."
In "Climategate" Sussman writes that "unscrupulous climate scientists" are supplying policy makers with the tools needed to usher in a wave of socialist policies "designed to de-develop the United States and redistribute American wealth." He also reveals the billions of dollars Al Gore and others stand to make off of the "so-called green revolution and cap-and-trade schemes."
"Hats off to Hannity and Fox News for having the courage to produce this very special program," said Sussman. "They should win a Nobel Prize for telling the scientific truth. Tonight will mark the end of the global warming hustle."
"Hannity also will include a host of climate scientists who claim the science cited to support global warming trends is fraudulent."
Rise of sea levels is 'the greatest lie ever told'
The uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story, writes Christopher Booker.
Christopher Booker, Published: 6:25PM GMT 28 Mar 2009
If one thing more than any other is used to justify proposals that the world must spend tens of trillions of dollars on combating global warming, it is the belief that we face a disastrous rise in sea levels. The Antarctic and Greenland ice caps will melt, we are told, warming oceans will expand, and the result will be catastrophe.
Although the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) only predicts a sea level rise of 59cm (17 inches) by 2100, Al Gore in his Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth went much further, talking of 20 feet, and showing computer graphics of cities such as Shanghai and San Francisco half under water. We all know the graphic showing central London in similar plight. As for tiny island nations such as the Maldives and Tuvalu, as Prince Charles likes to tell us and the Archbishop of Canterbury was again parroting last week, they are due to vanish.
But if there is one scientist who knows more about sea levels than anyone else in the world it is the Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Mörner, formerly chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change. And the uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner, who for 35 years has been using every known scientific method to study sea levels all over the globe, is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story.
Despite fluctuations down as well as up, "the sea is not rising," he says. "It hasn't risen in 50 years." If there is any rise this century it will "not be more than 10cm (four inches), with an uncertainty of plus or minus 10cm". And quite apart from examining the hard evidence, he says, the elementary laws of physics (latent heat needed to melt ice) tell us that the apocalypse conjured up by
Al Gore and Co could not possibly come about.
The reason why Dr Mörner, formerly a Stockholm professor, is so certain that these claims about sea level rise are 100 per cent wrong is that they are all based on computer model predictions, whereas his findings are based on "going into the field to observe what is actually happening in the real world".
When running the International Commission on Sea Level Change, he launched a special project on the Maldives, whose leaders have for 20 years been calling for vast sums of international aid to stave off disaster. Six times he and his expert team visited the islands, to confirm that the sea has not risen for half a century. Before announcing his findings, he offered to show the inhabitants a film explaining why they had nothing to worry about. The government refused to let it be shown.
Similarly in Tuvalu, where local leaders have been calling for the inhabitants to be evacuated for 20 years, the sea has if anything dropped in recent decades. The only evidence the scaremongers can cite is based on the fact that extracting groundwater for pineapple growing has allowed seawater to seep in to replace it. Meanwhile, Venice has been sinking rather than the Adriatic rising, says Dr Mörner.
One of his most shocking discoveries was why the IPCC has been able to show sea levels rising by 2.3mm a year. Until 2003, even its own satellite-based evidence showed no upward trend. But suddenly the graph tilted upwards because the IPCC's favoured experts had drawn on the finding of a single tide-gauge in Hong Kong harbour showing a 2.3mm rise. The entire global sea-level projection was then adjusted upwards by a "corrective factor" of 2.3mm, because, as the IPCC scientists admitted, they "needed to show a trend".
When I spoke to Dr Mörner last week, he expressed his continuing dismay at how the IPCC has fed the scare on this crucial issue. When asked to act as an "expert reviewer" on the IPCC's last two reports, he was "astonished to find that not one of their 22 contributing authors on sea levels was a sea level specialist: not one". Yet the results of all this "deliberate ignorance" and reliance on rigged computer models have become the most powerful single driver of the entire warmist hysteria.
•For more information, see Dr Mörner on YouTube (Google Mörner, Maldives and YouTube); or read on the net his 2007 EIR interview "Claim that sea level is rising is a total fraud"; or email him – morner@pog.nu – to buy a copy of his booklet 'The Greatest Lie Ever Told'
Fined, frozen and now jailed
The Marine Fisheries Agency was certainly onto a winner when it enlisted the aid of the Assets Recovery Agency in its ruthless war against our fishermen. In December 2007 Charles McBride and his son Charles, from Kilkeel in Northern Ireland, were fined £385,000 for under-declaring catches of whitefish and prawns in the Irish Sea, threatening the loss of their homes and boat. But the Assets Recovery Agency, using powers designed to recover money from drug dealers, also froze all their assets. To pay the fines, the McBrides tried to borrow against their assets. Now, for this effort to pay the fines, Liverpool Crown Court has sentenced the two men to two and three months in gaol for “contempt of court”.
Blown away
The Climate Change Secretary, Ed Miliband, timed his jibe impeccably last week when he said that opposing wind farms is as “socially unacceptable” as “not wearing a seatbelt”. Britain’s largest windfarm companies are pulling out of wind as fast as they can. Despite 100 per cent subsidies, the credit crunch and technical problems spell an end to Gordon Brown’s £100 billion dream of meeting our EU target to derive 35 per cent of our electricity from “renewables” by 2020.
Meanwhile the Government gives the go-ahead for three new 1,000 megawatt gas-fired power stations in Wales. Each of them will generate more than the combined average output (700 megawatts) of all the 2,400 wind turbines so far built. The days of the “great wind fantasy” will soon be over.
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