Global Warming

Hiding the Real Data-Sets Behind the Headlines

Published by Papa Giorgio

Claim: ‘World will warm faster than predicted in next five years’, study warns – ‘Expected to silence global warming skeptics’

Above is one example of a failed Guardian prediction. Another one is midway down… but these scare tactics work to push legislation of political goals. Not science.

1) there is a calculable atmospheric concentration of green house gasses that *necessarily* correlates to an atmospheric temperature

2) there is such a temperature at which biology is chemically impossible

(The Pit)

What we know is that CO2 is not having any effect on climate, like the “disruptionists” would have us believe. And while there is a temperature at which life cannot exist — d u h ! — in the past we have been a few degrees warmer than current temperatures — and history shows us that civilization flourished during these “dangerous” times. Some of the below works through these ideas.

ESPIONAGE

There seems to be a misunderstanding by the general public of the NOAA and other organizations and how they misuse data points (or average them wrongly).

So, for instance, professor Mueller at Berkeley mentions how climate “scientists” were hiding the decline in the past:

They were skewing the numbers in other words. This is an example of fraud. But numbers can be skewed by faulty or outdated methods/equipment. For instance,

EQUIPMENT FAIL

Here are some examples of fudged data because of sub-standard equipment:

You’d think the answer would be obvious, but here we have a NOAA operated USHCN climate station of record providing a live experiment. It always helps to illustrate with photos. Today I surveyed a sewage treatment plant, one of 4 stations surveyed today (though I tried for 5) and found that for convenience, they had made a nice concrete walkway to allow servicing the Fisher-Porter rain gauge, which needs a paper punch tape replaced one a month.

Here is what you see in visible light:

Here is what the infrared camera sees:

Note that the concrete surface is around 22-24°C, while the grassy areas are between 12-19°C

This station will be rated a CRN5 by this definition from the NOAA Climate Reference Network handbook, section 2.2.1:

Class 5 (error >~= 5C) – Temperature sensor located next to/above an artificial heating source, such a building, roof top, parking lot, or concrete surface.”

More than half of the stations the NOAA use are tainted or wrongly placed equipment.

CHANGING DATA-SETS

Another example of changing averages was noted by Steve Goddard and others — even the NOAA have acknowledge it — have been discussing recently is exemplified in Dr. Judith Carry’s post on the matter (from a larger post of mine):

Even the Wall Street Journal chose the higher temperature reading to say that July of 2012 was July was the “hottest month in the contiguous U.S. since records began in 1895.” WUWT found this on accident and it has led to quite a few other revelations as we will see. Here is description in part of what we looking at:

Glaring inconsistencies found between State of the Climate (SOTC) reports sent to the press and public and the “official” climate database record for the United States. Using NCDC’s own data, July 2012 can no longer be claimed to be the “hottest month on record”.

[….]

I initially thought this was just some simple arithmetic error or reporting error, a one-off event, but then I began to find it in other months when I compared the output from the NCDC climate database plotter. Here is a table of the differences I found for the last two years between claims made in the SOTC report and the NCDC database output.

[….]

In almost every instance dating back to the inception of the CONUS Tavg value being reported in the SOTC report, there’s a difference. Some are quite significant. In most cases, the database value is cooler than the claim made in the SOTC report. Clearly, it is a systemic issue that spans over two years of reporting to the press and to the public.

It suggests that claims made by NCDC when they send out these SOTC reports aren’t credible because there are such differences between the data. Clearly, NCDC means for the plotter output they link to, to be an official representation to the public, so there cannot be a claim of me using some “not fit for purpose” method to get that data….

The Wall Street Journal made a graph showing this record setting month (left). The more accurate temperature for July likewise is shown in the same graph (right):

This looking at the data sets chosen and what is used and isn’t used to support an idea that fails in every way. Combine this obvious cherry-picking with the bias, collusion, and charges against the report that the President used to route Congress, all show we have a problem Houston! But this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. It seems the NOAA has been skewing these temps for some time. Why? Because the left uses this as a way to promote an ever growing government and the scientists get more-and-more funding. This data fudging story is newer, and it is evolving quickley, including this newest post via Real Science where Steve Goddard notes that More Than 40% Of USHCN Station Data Is Fabricated. Here is Dr. Judith carry’s synopsis (excerpted), in which she critiques a bit Goddard’s post… but then bows to the evidence:

OK, acknowledging that Goddard made some analysis errors, I am still left with some uneasiness about the actual data, and why it keeps changing. For example, Jennifer Marohasy has been writing about Corrupting Australian’s temperature record.

In the midst of preparing this blog post, I received an email from Anthony Watts, suggesting that I hold off on my post since there is some breaking news. Watts pointed me to a post by Paul Homewood entitled Massive Temperature Adjustments At Luling, Texas. Excerpt:

So, I thought it might be worth looking in more detail at a few stations, to see what is going on. In Steve’s post, mentioned above, he links to the USHCN Final dataset for monthly temperatures, making the point that approx 40% of these monthly readings are “estimated”, as there is no raw data.

From this dataset, I picked the one at the top of the list, (which appears to be totally random), Station number 415429, which is Luling, Texas.

Taking last year as an example, we can see that ten of the twelve months are tagged as “E”, i.e estimated. It is understandable that a station might be a month, or even two, late in reporting, but it is not conceivable that readings from last year are late. (The other two months, Jan/Feb are marked “a”, indicating missing days).

But, the mystery thickens. Each state produces a monthly and annual State Climatological Report, which among other things includes a list of monthly mean temperatures by station. If we look at the 2013 annual report for Texas, we can see these monthly temperatures for Luling.

Where an “M” appears after the temperature, this indicates some days are missing, i.e Jan, Feb, Oct and Nov. (Detailed daily data shows just one missing day’s minimum temperature for each of these months).

Yet, according to the USHCN dataset, all ten months from March to December are “Estimated”. Why, when there is full data available?

But it gets worse. The table below compares the actual station data with what USHCN describe as “the bias-adjusted temperature”. The results are shocking.

In other words, the adjustments have added an astonishing 1.35C to the annual temperature for 2013. Note also that I have included the same figures for 1934, which show that the adjustment has reduced temperatures that year by 0.91C. So, the net effect of the adjustments between 1934 and 2013 has been to add 2.26C of warming.

Note as well, that the largest adjustments are for the estimated months of March – December. This is something that Steve Goddard has been emphasising.

It is plain that these adjustments made are not justifiable in any way. It is also clear that the number of “Estimated” measurements made are not justified either, as the real data is there, present and correct.

Watts appears in the comments, stating that he has contacted John Nielsen-Gammon (Texas State Climatologist) about this issue. Nick Stokes also appears in the comments, and one commenter finds a similar problem for another Texas station.

Homewood’s post sheds light on Goddard’s original claim regarding the data drop out (not just stations that are no longer reporting, but reporting stations that are ‘estimated’). I infer from this that there seems to be a real problem with the USHCN data set, or at least with some of the stations. Maybe it is a tempest in a teacup, but it looks like something that requires NOAA’s attention. As far as I can tell, NOAA has not responded to Goddard’s allegations. Now, with Homewood’s explanation/clarification, NOAA really needs to respond….

(H/T to Climate Realist ~ See WUWT and Hockey Schtick for more)

So we see in the above, that temperatures can be changed years later as the totality of the data is included. What was considered the hottest falls to just an average month in the heat index.

And this has — within the past few months — turned into a very large debate.

EQUIPMENT FAIL II

Here is another example of older/faulty equipment:

A Quick Note about the Difference between RSS and UAH TLT data

There is a noticeable difference between the RSS and UAH lower troposphere temperature anomaly data. Dr. Roy Spencer discussed this in his July 2011 blog post On the Divergence Between the UAH and RSS Global Temperature Records.  In summary, John Christy and Roy Spencer believe the divergence is caused by the use of data from different satellites.  UAH has used the NASA Aqua AMSU satellite in recent years, while as Dr. Spencer writes:

…RSS is still using the old NOAA-15 satellite which has a decaying orbit, to which they are then applying a diurnal cycle drift correction based upon a climate model, which does not quite match reality.

I updated the graphs in Roy Spencer’s post in On the Differences and Similarities between Global Surface Temperature and Lower Troposphere Temperature Anomaly Datasets.

While the two lower troposphere temperature datasets are different in recent years, UAH believes their data are correct, and, likewise, RSS believes their TLT data are correct.  Does the UAH data have a warming bias in recent years or does the RSS data have cooling bias?  Until the two suppliers can account for and agree on the differences, both are available for presentation.

 

ROSE COLORED GLASSES

Another example of competing ideas is this example from two major UK papers, the first being from the Guardian:

This next one from the Daily Mail:

(Daily Mail) ….The most widely used measurements of Arctic ice extent are the daily satellite readings issued by the US National Snow and Ice Data Center, which is co-funded by Nasa. These reveal that – while the long-term trend still shows a decline – last Monday, August 25, the area of the Arctic Ocean with at least 15 per cent ice cover was 5.62 million square kilometres.

This was the highest level recorded on that date since 2006 (see graph, right), and represents an increase of 1.71 million square kilometres over the past two years – an impressive 43 per cent.

Other figures from the Danish Meteorological Institute suggest that the growth has been even more dramatic. Using a different measure, the area with at least 30 per cent ice cover, these reveal a 63 per cent rise – from 2.7 million to 4.4 million square kilometres.

[….]

Crucially, the ice is also thicker, and therefore more resilient to future melting. Professor Andrew Shepherd, of Leeds University, an expert in climate satellite monitoring, said yesterday: ‘It is clear from the measurements we have collected that the Arctic sea ice has experienced a significant recovery in thickness over the past year.

‘It seems that an unusually cool summer in 2013 allowed more ice to survive through to last winter. This means that the Arctic sea ice pack is thicker and stronger than usual, and this should be taken into account when making predictions of its future extent.’

Same data used, one says BEWARE, the END IS NEAR, the other says making gains, as the graph shows below:

(So are Polar Bears, BTW) And the Antarctic has made BIG GAINS. But if the left — yes, the left — says we should renter the little ice-age to be at a normal point of “climate disruption,” then they are living a pipe-dream. As the earth gets warmer life flourishes, as warmer periods in history have exemplified:

June was ranked one of the coldest months in a while. According to the NOAA, July 2014 ranked 29th coldest out of 120 using the Maximum temperature. And so we enter the discussion about if the pause is real… which is now being acknowledged by almost all (except the IPCC).

PAUSE

Here is Dr. Judith Curry posting ion the subject before getting into two papers that talk about it from two points of view:

With 39 explanations and counting, and some climate scientists now arguing that it might last yet another decade, the IPCC has sidelined itself in irrelevance until it has something serious to say about the pause and has reflected on whether its alarmism is justified, given its reliance on computer models that predicted temperature rises that have not occurred. – Rupert Darwall 

The statement by Rupert Darwall concisely states what is at stake with regards to the ‘pause.’   This seriously needs to be sorted out….

For a running — updated — list of these excuses mentioned above, see here. What HAS been clearly shown is that while some wish to make CO2 illegal, CO2 is in fact not driving the climate:

GROUP-THINK

What is being shown as of late is that more-and-more scientists are becoming concerned with the group-think in the climate-sciences. Again, Dr. Judith Curry was the biggest pro-AGW proponent, but has — like many others leaders in their respective field — changed or softened her/their positions on what the science is actually showing:

The implications of dogmatic groupthink and intimidation for the pursuit of sound science — and sound policy — are chilling. – Christopher Snowden

A collection of articles from the health science community on the fate of papers and scientists that challenge the consensus.

SUN & OCEAN

  • Gross Scientific Negligence – IPCC Ignored Huge Body Of Peer-Reviewed Literature Showing Sun’s Clear Impact – See more at: http://tinyurl.com/kw47zcf (NASA is changing on this as well)
  • NASA is saying the sun — thanks to the Goddard Institute studying this, is the driver of warming and cooling: http://tinyurl.com/m29yo99 (Via Hockey Shtick)

And yet another study is showing the sun as the major player… NOT greenhouse gases.

So what’s the bottom line? NOAA temps change over time. Many in this respective field are seeing group-think. Ideology is driving this group-think, not science.

Why should you be interested? Sea surface temperature records indicate El Niño and La Niña events are responsible for the warming of global sea surface temperature anomalies over the past 30 years, not man-made greenhouse gases. I’ve searched sea surface temperature records for more than 4 years and ocean heat content records for more than 3 years, and I can find no evidence of an anthropogenic greenhouse gas signal in either dataset. That is, the warming of the global oceans has been caused by naturally occurring, sunlight-fueled, coupled ocean-atmosphere processes, not anthropogenic greenhouse gases.

(From the newest global temp data-set at WUWT)

No matter what evidences one puts forward, until people remove their rose-colored glasses, they will continue to explain away the pause showing CO2 has nothing to do with global temperatures.

Global Warming Fear Mongering (1988 Flashback: Maldives Edition)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Here is an example of failed predictions that new orgs love to report for their “immediacy” of danger… which makes news “exciting” ~ click to isolate this 1988 prediction:

This seems odd in light of Maldives spending many millions of dollars to build two new airports.

Shouldn’t they be investing in life rafts? Or are Western busy-bodies the only ones really worried about “man-caused” global warming? Here is a Canadian Free Press story:

The Maldives in the Indian Ocean have long been used by global warming alarmists to drive home the dangers of rising sea levels should polar ice sheets keep melting because of man-made global warming. In 2012 former President of the Maldive Islands, Mohammed Nasheed, said, “If carbon emissions continue at the rate they are climbing today, my country will be under water in seven years.”

With such a prediction and recalling how the latest UN IPCC report boosted its estimate of sea level rise, taking into account that CO2 emissions show no signs of abating, you would think the Maldives would be the last place developers would build anything. The Maldives are barely more than a meter above sea level on average. Yet as Pierre Gosselin reports, “The tourist industry does not believe in the downfall of the Maldives. Thirty additional new luxury class hotel complexes are planned for the next 6 to 10 years, not counting the countless smaller homes. Tourism is currently increasing 20% annually. Whatever is really behind all the rising seal level scar stories, huge commercial investors are obviously dismissing them. If anything, these scare stories are providing lots of publicity for the island’s tourism industry. Already more than 1 million tourists are flocking to the islands every year and Nasheed says the island can handle many more.

The developers are on safe ground in spite of Nasheed’s dire warnings. There is a lot of science supporting the tourism industry’s belief that sea level rise is not a problem.

What — in our past — is still worse than today’s “scares” and droughts?

…read more…

Here is a quick synopsis of a really hard time in our countries history:

Compared to today’s stats via “the Palmer index,” while bad… it is not nearly as bad as it has been — nation wide:

Forbes has this excellent article about what responsible governments do… and what California does:

…As we all know, the President and others are selling the canard that the current drought is the result of global warming or climate change.  The fact that we had decades- long droughts years before industrialization doesn’t matter to them as they bloviate over a drought of several years.

Simply stated, California government has other priorities – priorities which to them are far more important that ensuring that 38 million people have water. They include:

  • A High Speed Rail project, mired in lawsuits and of uncertain costs – at least $68 billion but perhaps double that amount, and
  • A 2004 $3 billion stem cell bond program ($6 billion with interest) that has produced no approved therapies but has, according to the AP, resulted in “the opening of sleek buildings and gleaming labs at a dozen private and public universities built with matching funds” without any cures in the pipeline.  Of course, now they want more money.

California legislators spend millions more on nonessential items like $2.7 million for a new swimming pool in Calexico near the Mexican border – during a drought.  California is also spending an additional $46.6 million to build up to 54 hydrogen fuel stations to serve a state of 158,648 square miles.  That is one station for every 2,938 square miles.  Hope you don’t get stranded.

Rather than waste money on such projects, which can’t possibly be more important than water, California should look to places like Singapore to learn what a responsible government should be doing. 

Singapore has but 247 square miles.  It is a population of nearly 4.5 million people.  Obviously, it has very little land for such things as reservoirs.   Instead, Singapore relies on 15 reservoirs, desalinated water, water reclamation, and imported water to meet their water needs.   

Singapore obviously made water production a priority for its tiny landmass that is 0.155% of California’s landmass, yet has 8.4% of California’s population.  That is what responsible governments do, and one reason why Singapore has the third highest per-capita GDPs in the world, despite its size and lack of natural resources….

REFUTATION of the ABOVE

(Originally posted December of 2014)

This is meant mainly as a supplement to a Christmas Eve-Eve gathering/discussion I was at. I will make this post  a little different than other posts, as, it will be “minimalist.” This is the third installment of the topics covered, which are polar bears, rising sea levels, CO2, Inconvenient Truth (the movie), nuclear power, warmest year, electric vehicles (EVs)/hybrid cars, and bullet trains.

One of the main “evidences” the students raised was “rising oceans” for global warming being true. These students are basically saying… “Because my professor said” … see for yourself (via Breitbart):

I wanted to draw the people who believe this (rising oceans) attention to a very old photograph compared to a new one to compare La Jolla (California) sea levels from 1871 to Now (REAL CLIMATE SCIENCE):

lajolla18712b

Also, Photographs show no change in Sydney sea level over the last 130 years (REAL CLIMATE SCIENCE):


There has been no change. ~ Real Science

AP’s Seth Borenstein publishes pure propaganda: Climate change has made Earth ‘hotter, weirder…downright wilder’

Borenstein: In the more than two decades since world leaders first got together to try to solve global warming, life on Earth has changed, not just the climate. It’s gotten hotter, more polluted with heat-trapping gases, more crowded and just downright wilder. Global temperature: up six-tenths of a degree. Population: up 1.7 billion people. Sea level: up 3 inches. U.S. extreme weather: up 30 percent. Ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica: down 4.9 trillion tons of ice.  “Simply put, we are rapidly remaking the planet and beginning to suffer the consequences,” says Michael Oppenheimer, of Princeton University. Diplomats from more than 190 nations opened talks Monday at a United Nations global warming conference in Lima, Peru, to pave the way for an international treaty they hope to forge next year.

Climate Depot’s Morano comment: ‘AP’s Borenstein can be trusted to shill for UN’s climate summit in Lima Peru, which I will be attending and speaking at. Borenstein relies on Michael Oppenheimer (who is the UN scientists on the payroll of Hollywood stars) and Climategate’s Michael Mann. Borenstein ignores tide gauges on sea level  showing deceleration of sea level rise and ignores satellite temperatures which show the Earth in an 18 year ‘pause’ or ‘standstill’ of global warming. Borenstein tortues data in order to claim more weather extremes. We are currently at or near historic lows in tornadoes and hurricanes. Even droughts are on long term declines and floods show no trend. We know not to expect more from Borenstein.’ See: ‘Long sad history of AP reporter Seth Borenstein’s woeful global warming reporting’

  1. Sea level claims debunked here:
  2. Extreme weather claims debunked here:
  3. Greenland ice claims debunked here:
  4. Antarctica ice claims debunked here:
  5. Overpopulation claims debunked here

Breitbart makes fun of the idea that loans and insurance could ever be had if these Islands are soon to underwater… unless these banks and insurance companies know that “Climate Change” is more political than science

Great news from the scuba-diving tropical paradise Maldives. They’ve just opened another airport.

This means that the Indian Ocean island nation now has four international airports and seven domestic ones. Quite a lot for a country with a population of less than 400,000. Presumably they have high hopes for their tourist industry as they develop luxury resorts on ever more remote atolls.

[….]

Here’s the World Bank: “Climate change presents a challenge for every island in the Maldives, which all lie on the sea level. Any changes in the climate will greatly affect the Maldivian way of life.”

Here’s the UN Foundation: “Climate change is a serious threat to low lying islands like Maldives whose landmass is close to sea level. The projected rise in sea level over the next century due to climate change is commonly agreed to be about one meter.  The highest point on this island nation is one meter.  Learn more about the existential threat of climate change on this island and learn more about how the country is pressing for global action on climate change.”

And let us never forget the tragically moving, yet cheery-in-the-face-of-disaster underwater cabinet meeting staged by the Maldives government in 2009 to draw international attention to the terrible and imminent threat these poor islands face.

Luckily I have thought up a brilliant solution to this problem. Maybe the lucky Maldives (the thriving tourist paradise) could help the unlucky Maldives (the one about to be drowned by global warming) with money and material aid. Perhaps it could use its vast tourist revenues to mitigate against any problems caused by this terrible “climate change” thing. Perhaps it could use its 11 airports to help evacuate the other Maldives’ climate refugees.

(Gateway Pundit): Seven years ago ABC News warned viewers that New York City will be under water by 2015 due to global warming.

New York City underwater? Gas over $9 a gallon? A carton of milk costs almost $13? Welcome to June 12, 2015. Or at least that was the wildly-inaccurate version of 2015 predicted by ABC News exactly seven years ago. Appearing on Good Morning America in 2008, Bob Woodruff hyped Earth 2100, a special that pushed apocalyptic predictions of the then-futuristic 2015. The segment included supposedly prophetic videos, such as a teenager declaring, “It’s June 8th, 2015.”

“One carton of milk is $12.99.” (On the actual June 8, 2015, a gallon of milk cost, on average, $3.39.) Another clip featured this prediction for the current year: “Gas reached over $9 a gallon.”

The only way food would be soo high is if Obama’s war on affordable energy works it’s course! How come Manhattan property is through the roof!

(Breitbart) In 2006, on NBC’s Today Show, former-Vice President Al Gore predicted that Manhattan would be flooded in “15 to 20 years.” He added, “In fact the World Trade Center Memorial site would be underwater.” Just 3 years ago, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority predicted that within the next ten years, “Irene-like storms of the future would put a third of New York City streets under water and flood many of the tunnels leading into Manhattan in under an hour because of climate change[.]”

By hook or crook, through super storms or glacier melt, Global Cooling Global Warming Climate Change has doomed the Big Apple.

What we have here are two of the most respected environmental voices among the political Left — Gore and the government — warning of dire flooding hitting Manhattan within the next 10 years. And at least according to their activism, the predominantly left-wing, Global Warming believers of Manhattan are listening. Furious about the lack of wealth-distribution that will save the planet and their small island, just 6 months ago, more than 300,000 took to the streets of Manhattan to protest.

And yet, a funny thing is happening in the real world of the free market. Manhattan might be the elite media/entertainment/intellectual hub of the cult of Global Warming, but where the rubber meets the bottom line, the cult obviously doesn’t really believe in its own propaganda. If they did, Manhattan real estate prices would be collapsing, not hitting record highs as they currently are.

If people truly believe an area is going to be flooded as soon as in the next decade, those same people would be selling off their real estate. Not just to escape but to sell before conditions worsened and real estate prices bottomed out further. As the deadline loomed closer, prices would decrease further.

What’s happening, though, is the exact opposite.

The average Manhattan home price is now over $1.7 million. With some apartment prices now breaking nine figures, it’s time to take a look at the booming New York real estate market and explore where middle class families fit into the picture.

At 157 West 57th Street, the most expensive New York home sale was just completed with the penthouse of this new building going for over $100 million.

Howard Lorber, the chairman of Douglas Elliman, the city’s largest residential brokerage, told me that there is no sign of this trend slowing down. He called New York a safe place for people around the world to invest in real estate.

Maybe what’s happening is that Manhattan’s left-wing Global Warming believers are suckering right-wing Climate Deniers into buying doomed real estate at record prices?

…there’s more…

JO NOVA catches us up with the latest studies involving islans shrinking:

This should end all the Pacific Island climate claims right here. A new study of over 700 islands for decades shows that even though seas are rising faster than any time in the last million years, somehow no islands with people on are shrinking. This means there are no climate change refugees from any vanishing island. Plus it’s more proof that highly adjusted satellite data is recording sea levels on some other planet.

Over the past decades, atoll islands exhibited no widespread sign of physical destabilization in the face of sea-level rise. A reanalysis of available data, which cover 30 Pacific and Indian Ocean atolls including 709 islands, reveals that no atoll lost land area and that 88.6% of islands were either stable or increased in area, while only 11.4% contracted.

Look how closely these researchers are tracking the shores. Below on Tuamoto, French Polynesia, scientists can tell you that islets 12 and 14 (see pic) have disappeared since 1962. So we can track roving blobs of sand about 20 to 30 meters across.

No Habitable Island, None, Got Smaller:

The researchers reckon that 10 hectares is about the smallest island you’d want to plonk a resort on, that’s about that is about ten Rugby fields. Conveniently for us, no island bigger than 10 hectares shrank despite the world adding two thousand coal fired plants and a billion cars.

[….]

See the graph. All the larger islands are staying the same size or growing.

WATTS UP WITH THAT has the abstract and the conclusion of the study. Here is the abstract:

Abstract: Over the past decades, atoll islands exhibited no widespread sign of physical destabilization in the face of sea-level rise. A reanalysis of available data, which cover 30 Pacific and Indian Ocean atolls including 709 islands, reveals that no atoll lost land area and that 88.6% of islands were either stable or increased in area, while only 11.4% contracted. Atoll islands affected by rapid sea-level rise did not show a distinct behavior compared to islands on other atolls. Island behavior correlated with island size, and no island smaller than 10 ha decreased in size. This threshold could be used to define the minimum island size required for human occupancy and to assess atoll countries and territories’ vulnerability to climate change. Beyond emphasizing the major role of climate drivers in causing substantial changes in the configuration of islands, this reanalysis of available data indicates that these drivers explain subregional variations in atoll behavior and within-atoll variations in island and shoreline (lagoon vs. ocean) behavior, following atoll-specific patterns. Increasing human disturbances, especially land reclamation and human structure construction, operated on atoll-to-shoreline spatial scales, explaining marked within-atoll variations in island and shoreline behavior. Collectively, these findings highlight the heterogeneity of atoll situations. Further research needs include addressing geographical gaps (Indian Ocean, Caribbean, north-western Pacific atolls), using standardized protocols to allow comparative analyses of island and shoreline behavior across ocean regions, investigating the role of ecological drivers, and promoting interdisciplinary approaches. Such efforts would assist in anticipating potential future changes in the contributions and interactions of key drivers.

Re-Education Camps and Censorship “Chic” in the UK

Published by Papa Giorgio

Powerline has this story of government run media being used to guide the public towards a certain conclusion.Pravda

Salon.com (yes, I know) is celebrating that the BBC has decided to go full Pravda on us and cease allowing “climate deniers” on the air.  Well, it is a government-run media establishment.  But that would be the same BBC that refused to allow Churchill to broadcast his “appeasement denial” views back in the 1930s.  Yup, same slimy people.

Anyway, quoth a jubilant Salon:

Good news for viewers of BBC News: you’ll no longer be subjected to the unhinged ravings of climate deniers and other members of the anti-science fringe. . .  Were every network to start doing what the BBC is, their unfounded opinions would cease to be heard, Bill Nye wouldn’t have to keep debating them, and maybe, just maybe, they’d all just go away.

Esquire Magazine goes further in it’s diatribe of censorship that prove there is a totalitarian in every leftist waiting to get out, something Powerline missed, by-the-way:

The BBC Forbids Idiots On The Topic Of Science: No longer must Bill Nye debate the ignorant, at least in the U.K.

[….]

…BBC journalists must now attend seminars with academics and scientists who educate on what constitutes popular and marginal opinions.

Perpetuating ignorance for the sake of entertainment is not only getting boring, but is actively dangerous. US media companies should take note. American media makes political bipartisanship a game of spin and false controversy, which—as Jon Stewart will tell you—can inflict a lot of very real pain….

Yes, re-education camps… you read it right. Scientism on the march in the name of secularism. The Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), otherwise known as the Khmer Rouge, would be proud, as would others. Even the HHS is defining media in the immigration battle, this from The Corner:

– No recording devices will be allowed
– No questions will be allowed during the tour
– No interacting with staff and children at the shelter
– We ask that your questions be provided via email or phone after the tour to Kenneth Wolfe
– HHS ACF public affairs will provide answers to your follow up questions as quickly as possible
– We will provide photos of the facility after the tour
– There will be no on-site interviews by HHS staff before or after the tour, all inquiries go to Kenneth Wolfe

To continue… while the BBC stops debate on climate, the UK starts to talk seriously about the normality of pedophilia. CNN notes just how bad it is for the BBC in this regard:

Gay Patriot notes the following:

An increasingly vocal and open group of prominent British Academics is claiming that paedophilia is a perfectly normal and natural thing.

“Paedophilic interest is natural and normal for human males,” said the presentation. “At least a sizeable minority of normal males would like to have sex with children … Normal males are aroused by children.”

The presentation in question was presented at an academic conference at Cambridge University in the UK,  where other topics included: “Liberating the paedophile: a discursive analysis,” and “Danger and difference: the stakes of hebephilia.”

And — like every other horror of the current ear — this has its roots in the sexual liberation movement of the 1970′s.

With the Pill, the legalisation of homosexuality and shrinking taboos against premarital sex, the Seventies was an era of quite sudden sexual emancipation. Many liberals, of course, saw through PIE’s cynical rhetoric of “child lib”. But to others on the Left, sex by or with children was just another repressive boundary to be swept away – and some of the most important backing came from academia. [Emphasis added]

Hey, “Love is Love,” right?… 

Malcolm Muggeridge (a British journalist, author, satirist, media personality, soldier-spy and, in his later years, a Catholic convert and writer) said it best:

“If God is ‘dead,’ somebody is going to have to take his place. It will be megalomania or erotomania, the drive for power or the drive for pleasure, the clenched fist or the phallus, Hitler or Hugh Heffner.” 

  • Ravi Zacharias, The Real Face of Atheism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2004), 32.

Tree Rings Reveal Flood/Drought Events Tame Today In Comparison

Published by Papa Giorgio

Studies of historical tree ring data in southern Alberta show a trend in the South Saskatchewan River Basin flows over the past 600 years. This data indicates that flood and drought events in the past WERE FAR MORE SEVERE than we have experienced during the mid-to late-20th-century. (emphasis added)

This story of yet another failure of global warming come from Power Line:

A reader up in the Great White North directs our attention to the fact that Manitoba and Saskatchewan are both suffering from severe flooding at the moment, which automatically sets off talk of . . . now wait for it, darn it . . . climate change!  There’s just one inconvenient problem: a careful study reported yesterday in the National Post finds that extreme precipitation events in the region are less frequent today than over the last several hundred years.  This chart tells the story very clearly (click to go to Power Line, where you can make the graphic bigger):

The above coupled with the below via WUWT:

Taking the least-squares linear-regression trend on Remote Sensing Systems’ satellite-based monthly global mean lower-troposphere temperature dataset, there has been no global warming – none at all – for 17 years 10 months. This is the longest continuous period without any warming in the global instrumental temperature record since the satellites first watched in 1979. It has endured for more than half the entire satellite temperature record. Yet the lengthening Pause coincides with a continuing, rapid increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration….

[….]

The latest topical graph shows the RSS dataset for the 214 months September 1996 to May 2014 – more than half the 426-months satellite record:

 Al Gore said ALL the ice was suppose to be gone in the Arctic by now. Oooops.

Antarctic Sea Ice Sets Records ~ Climate Cycles

Published by Papa Giorgio

Via WUWT:

The sea ice surrounding Antarctica, which, as I reported in my book, has been steadily increasing throughout the period of satellite measurement that began in 1979, has hit a new all-time record high for areal coverage.

The new record anomaly for Southern Hemisphere sea ice, the ice encircling the southernmost continent, is 2.074 million square kilometers and was posted for the first time by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s The Cryosphere Today early Sunday morning. …

The Co-Founder of Green Peace Lists Some Inconvenient Truths

Published by Papa Giorgio

What’s Up With That opens us up for a list of nine ignored “thorns” that follows:

Patrick Moore, a Canadian environmentalist who helped found Greenpeace in the Seventies but subsequently left in protest at its increasingly extreme, anti-scientific, anti-capitalist stance, argues that the green position on climate change fails the most basic principles of the scientific method.

“The certainty among many scientists that humans are the main cause of climate change, including global warming, is not based on the replication of observable events. It is based on just two things, the theoretical effect of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, predominantly carbon dioxide, and the predictions of computer models using those theoretical calculations. There is no scientific “proof” at all.”

So here are the nine listed inconvenient truths for eco-fascists by Patrick Moore, Via Moonbat:

1. The concentration of CO2 in the global atmosphere is lower today, even including human emissions, than it has been during most of the existence of life on Earth.

2. The global climate has been much warmer than it is today during most of the existence of life on Earth. Today we are in an interglacial period of the Pleistocene Ice Age that began 2.5 million years ago and has not ended.

3. There was an Ice Age 450 million years ago when CO2 was about 10 times higher than it is today.

4. Humans evolved in the tropics near the equator. We are a tropical species and can only survive in colder climates due to fire, clothing and shelter.

5. CO2 is the most important food for all life on earth. All green plants use CO2 to produce the sugars that provide energy for their growth and our growth. Without CO2 in the atmosphere carbon-based life could never have evolved.

6. The optimum CO2 level for most plants is about 1600 parts per million, four times higher than the level today. This is why greenhouse growers purposely inject the CO2-rich exhaust from their gas and wood-fired heaters into the greenhouse, resulting in a 40-80 per cent increase in growth.

7. If human emissions of CO2 do end up causing significant warming (which is not certain) it may be possible to grow food crops in northern Canada and Russia, vast areas that are now too cold for agriculture.

8. Whether increased CO2 levels cause significant warming or not, the increased CO2 levels themselves will result in considerable increases in the growth rate of plants, including our food crops and forests.

9. There has been no further global warming for nearly 18 years during which time about 25 per cent of all the CO2 ever emitted by humans has been added to the atmosphere.

(Breitbart) If Greenpeace’s membership remained true to their principles they would have to eat with their bare hands because, as Moore notes, they are opposed to mining in all its forms.

“If you ask them for the name of any mine that is operating in an environmentally acceptable standard you will draw a blank. They have become so cornered by their own extremism that they must deny their daily use of cell phones, computers, bicycles, rapid transit, and yes, the simple teaspoon.”

Professor Fired By the IPS For Not Towing AGW Line

Published by Papa Giorgio

Climate Depot has this story — exclusive story — of the ever growing cultural Marxist censorship in academia:

Dr. Caleb Rossiter was “terminated” via email as an “Associate Fellow” from the progressive group Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), following his May 4th, 2014 Wall Street Journal OpEd titled “Sacrificing Africa for Climate Change,” in which he called man-made global warming an “unproved science.” Rossiter also championed the expansion of carbon based energy in Africa.  Dr.  Rossiter is an adjunct professor at American University. Rossiter, who has taught courses in climate statistics, holds a PhD in policy analysis and a masters degree in mathematics.

In an exclusive interview with Climate Depot, Dr. Rossiter explained: “If people ever say that fears of censorship for ‘climate change’ views are overblown, have them take a look at this: Just two days after I published a piece in the Wall Street Journal calling for Africa to be allowed the ‘all of the above’ energy strategy we have in the U.S., the Institute for Policy Studies terminated my 23-year relationship with them…because my analysis and theirs ‘diverge.’”

“I have tried to get [IPS] to discuss and explain their rejection of my analysis,’ Rossiter told Climate Depot. “When I countered a claim of ‘rapidly accelerating’ temperature change with the [UN] IPCC’s own data’, showing the nearly 20-year temperature pause — the best response I ever got was ‘Caleb, I don’t have time for this.’”

Watch Climate Debate Between Morano & TV Anchor Anand Naidoo

Published by Papa Giorgio

Also, see the recent recanting of major contributor to the Global Warming theory, via Climate Depot:

Scientist Dr. Daniel Botkin Tells Congress why he reversed his belief in global warming to become a skeptic: ‘There are several lines of evidence suggesting that it (AGW) is a weaker case today, not a stronger case’ — Rips Obama climate report as ‘filled with misstatements contradicted by well-established and well-known scientific papers’

Prominent Scientist Dr. Botkin, who has studied climate change for 45 years, told the Committee in Q&A:  ‘I have been concerned about global warming since 1968 and in the 1980s, it looked like the weight of evidence lent towards human induced climate change, to a significant extant, and since then it’s moved against it.’

Later in the hearing, Botkin elaborated: ‘I was concerned that there was a human induced climate warning and I gave talks and TV interviews that said that, but since the middle of the 1990s, there is evidence that is running against that. 

For example the temperature change is not tracking carbon dioxide very well. Then there is the information from the long term antarctic ice core and some from recent paper in the arctic,  that suggest that carbon dioxide does not lead temperature change,  it may actually lag it significantly or may not lead it at all, and if that is the case that is still an open but important scientific evidence. 

So there are several lines of evidence that are suggesting that it (AGW) is a weaker case today, not a stronger case.’

[….]

Selected Excerpts: (Full Testimony here)

Since 1968 I have published research on theoretical global warming, its potential ecological effects, and the implications for people and biodiversity. I have spent my career trying to help conserve our environment and its great diversity of species. In doing so I have always attempted to maintain an objective, intellectually honest, scientific approach in the best tradition of scientific endeavor. I have, accordingly, been dismayed and disappointed in recent years that this subject has been converted into a political and ideological debate.

[….]

I want to state up front that we have been living through a warming trend driven by a variety of influences. However, it is my view that this is not unusual, and contrary to the characterizations by the IPCC and the National Climate Assessment, these environmental changes are not apocalyptic nor irreversible.

2. My biggest concern is that both the reports present a number of speculative, and sometimes incomplete, conclusions embedded in language that gives them more scientific heft than they deserve. The reports are “scientific-sounding” rather than based on clearly settled facts or admitting their lack. Established facts about the global environment exist less often in science than laymen usually think.

3. HAS IT BEEN WARMING? Yes, we have been living through a warming trend, no doubt about that. The rate of change we are experiencing is also not unprecedented, and the “mystery” of the warming “plateau” simply indicates the inherent complexity of our global biosphere. Change is normal, life on Earth is inherently risky; it always has been. The two reports, however, makes it seem that environmental change is apocalyptic and irreversible. It is not.

[….]

The extreme overemphasis on human-induced global warming has taken our attention away from many environmental issues that used to be front and center but have been pretty much ignored in the 21st century.

Nine Environmental Issues that need our attention now

  • Energy
  • Fresh water
  • Phosphorus and other essential minerals
  • Habitat destruction
  • Invasive-species control
  • Endangered species
  • Pollution by directly toxic substances
  • Fisheries
  • Forests

Other scientists turning on “evidence” of anthropogenic global warming.

UN IPCC Lead Author Dr. Richard Tol Rips IPCC at Congressional Hearing: ‘The IPCC leadership has in the past been very adept at putting troublesome authors in positions where they cannot harm the cause. That practice must end’

UN IPCC Lead Author Dr. Richard Tol Rips 97% consensus claim: ‘The 97% is essentially pulled from thin air, it is not based on any credible research whatsoever’ – IPCC Lead Author Trashes 97% Consensus claims: UN IPCC Lead Author & University of Sussex economist Dr. Richard Tol: ‘Science is, of course, never settled.’ – Tol: ‘The 97% estimate is bandied about by basically everybody.  I had a close look at what this study really did. as far as I can see, The estimate just crumbles when you touch it. None of the statements in the papers are supported by the data that’s in the paper. The 97% is essentially pulled from thin air, it is not based on any credible research whatsoever.

Flashback: UN IPCC Lead Author Dr. Richard Tol admits no global warming for 17 years – Rips bias in IPCC – UN’s ‘inbuilt alarmism made me step down’ – ‘By the time the report was finished, however, it hadn’t warmed for 17 years’

UN IPCC Lead Author Dr. Richard Tol: ‘One of the startling facts about climate change is that there are very few facts about climate change. Climate change is mainly something of the future so we are really talking about model projections’

Congressional hearing: Scientists say UN IPCC puts politics before science, needs reform – IPCC Lead Author Tol: ‘Competent people are excluded because their views do not match those of their government’

UN Lead Author Michael Oppenheimer Admits to Congress Climate Science Not ‘Settled’: ‘The question of exactly how warm the Earth will become as a result (of rising CO2), that’s not’ settled

Climate Depot Note: Dr. Botkin joins many other scientists who recently publicly dissented from man-made climate fears.

The global warming movement continues to lose scientists, many formerly with the UN IPCC.

Another Prominent Scientist Dissents: Environmental physicist Dr. Jean-Louis Pinault: ‘This is a very uneven debate, skeptics cannot enforce their arguments in scientific journals that are subject to censorship’ – Declares AGW has produced an ‘economic and political media frenzy unprecedented in the history of science’

Another Dissenter: Geoscientst & former UN Consultant Dr. David Kear declares warming fears ‘based on unfounded unscientific beliefs’ – An ‘innocent gas, CO2, has been demonized and criminalized’

Another Prominent Scientist Dissents! Fmr. NASA Scientist Dr. Les Woodcock ‘Laughs’ at Global Warming – ‘Global warming is nonsense’ Top Prof. Declares

Flashback: UN IPCC Lead Author Dr. Richard Tol admits no global warming for 17 years – Rips bias in IPCC – UN’s ‘inbuilt alarmism made me step down’ – ‘By the time the report was finished, however, it hadn’t warmed for 17 years’

Green Guru James Lovelock on Climate Change: ‘I don’t think anybody really knows what’s happening. They just guess’ – Lovelock Reverses Himself on Global Warming

More Than 1000 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims – Challenge UN IPCC & Gore

Top Swedish Climate Scientist Says Warming Not Noticeable: ‘The warming we have had last a 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all’ – Award-Winning Dr. Lennart Bengtsson, formerly of UN IPCC: ‘We Are Creating Great Anxiety Without It Being Justified’

‘High Priestess of Global Warming’ No More! Former Warmist Climate Scientist Judith Curry Admits To Being ‘Duped Into Supporting IPCC’ – ‘If the IPCC is dogma, then count me in as a heretic’

German Meteorologist reverses belief in man-made global warming: Now calls idea that CO2 Can Regulate Climate ‘Sheer Absurdity’ — ‘Ten years ago I simply parroted what the IPCC told us’

UN Scientists Who Have Turned on the UN IPCC & Man-Made Climate Fears — A Climate Depot Flashback Report – Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” – UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.

‘Some of the most formidable opponents of climate hysteria include politically liberal physics Nobel laureate, Ivar Giaever; Freeman Dyson; father of the Gaia Hypothesis, James Lovelock — ‘Left-center chemist, Fritz Vahrenholt, one of the fathers of the German environmental movement’

Flashback: 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’

Going Against the Consensus ~ New Wave of IPCC Heretics

Published by Papa Giorgio

All the links associated with this recent story are dead (too much traffic… I was dealing with this here at RPT a few weeks ago — so I sympathizese), so I am working with this larger excerpt found at What’s Up With That (h/t to Climate Depot):

Doing science by consensus is not science at all, says the climatologist all the alarmists love to hate. Not that the enmity bothers Judith Curry too much — and certainly not as much as the debasement of impartial inquiry by which the warmist establishment keeps all those lovely grants coming.

When climatologist Judith Curry visited Melbourne last week she took the time to chat with Quadrant Online contributor Tony Thomas. The professor and chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology is something of a stormy petrel in the climate-change community, as she has broken ranks with alarmist colleagues to question the articles and ethics of the warmist faith. This has made her less than popular in certain circles, even inspiring Scientific American, house journal of the catastropharians, to brand her “a heretic” who has “turned on her colleagues.” [excerpt below]

Excerpts:

THOMAS: What empirical evidence is there, as distinct from modelling, that ‘missing heat’ has gone into the deep oceans?

CURRY: Basically, none.  Observations below 2 km in the ocean are exceedingly rare, and it is only since 2005 that we have substantial coverage below 700 metres.

THOMAS:  Are you supportive of the line that the ‘quiet sun’ presages an era of global cooling in the next few decades?

CURRY: One of the unfortunate consequences of the focus on anthropogenic forcing of climate is that solar effects on climate have been largely neglected.  I think that solar effects, combined with the large scale ocean-circulation regimes, presage continued stagnation in global temperatures for the next two decades.

THOMAS: If the skeptic/orthodox spectrum is a range from 1 (intense skeptic) to 10 (intensely IPCC orthodox), where on the scale would you put yourself

(a) as at 2009

(b) as at 2014,

and why has there been a shift (if any)?

CURRY: In early 2009, I would have rated myself as 7; at this point I would rate myself as a 3.  Climategate and the weak response of the IPCC and other scientists triggered a massive re-examination of my support of the IPCC, and made me look at the science much more sceptically.

The story mentioned above from Scientific American likewise is found elsewhere in full, at the journal Nature:

In trying to understand the Judith Curry phenomenon, it is tempting to default to one of two comfortable and familiar story lines.

For most of her career, Curry, who heads the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has been known for her work on hurricanes, Arctic ice dynamics and other climate-related topics. But over the past year or so she has become better known for something that annoys, even infuriates, many of her scientific colleagues. Curry has been engaging actively with the climate change skeptic community, largely by participating on outsider blogs such as Climate Audit, the Air Vent and the Black¬board. Along the way, she has come to question how climatologists react to those who question the science, no matter how well established it is. Although many of the skeptics recycle critiques that have long since been disproved, others, she believes, bring up valid points—and by lumping the good with the bad, climate researchers not only miss out on a chance to improve their science, they come across to the public as haughty. “Yes, there’s a lot of crankology out there,” Curry says. “But not all of it is. If only 1 percent of it or 10 percent of what the skeptics say is right, that is time well spent because we have just been too encumbered by groupthink.”

She reserves her harshest criticism for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). For most climate scientists the major reports issued by the United Nations–sponsored body every five years or so constitute the consensus on climate science. Few scientists would claim the IPCC is perfect, but Curry thinks it needs thoroughgoing reform. She accuses it of “corruption.” “I’m not going to just spout off and endorse the IPCC,” she says, “because I think I don’t have confidence in the process.”

Whispered discreetly at conferences or in meeting rooms, these claims might be accepted as part of the frequently contentious process of a still evolving area of science. Stated publicly on some of the same Web sites that broke the so-called Climategate e-mails last fall, they are considered by many to be a betrayal, earning Curry epithets from her colleagues ranging from “naive” to “bizarre” to “nasty” to worse.

All of which sets up the two competing story lines, which are, on the surface at least, equally plausible. The first paints Curry as a peacemaker—someone who might be able to restore some civility to the debate and edge the public toward meaningful action. By frankly acknowledging mistakes and encouraging her colleagues to treat skeptics with respect, she hopes to bring about a meeting of the minds.

…read more…

Climate Depot has another story linked to that Marco Morano entitles: UN IPCC Lead Author Dr. Richard Tol admits no global warming for 17 years – Rips bias in IPCC – UN’s ‘inbuilt alarmism made me step down’ – ‘By the time the report was finished, however, it hadn’t warmed for 17 years’ — in it we find nuggets like:

….The report also illustrates just how outmoded the IPCC has become since it was founded in 1988. Its reports are written over a period of three years, and finished months before publication.

When preparations started on AR5, the world hadn’t warmed for 13 years. That is a bit odd, if you believe the models, but not odd enough to merit a lot of attention.

By the time the report was finished, however, it hadn’t warmed for 17 years. That is decidedly odd, but hard to accommodate in a near-final draft that has been through three rounds of review.

After the report was finalized, but before it was published, a number of papers appeared with hypotheses about the pause in warming. AR5 was out of date before it was released.

The IPCC model… is broken.

[….]

Authors who want to see their long hours of IPCC work recognized should thus present their impact as worse than the next one.

It was this inbuilt alarmism that made me step down from the team that drafted the Summary for Policy Makers of Working Group 2. And indeed, the report was greeted by the four horsemen of the apocalypse: famine, pestilence, war, death all made headlines.

…read more…

Richard Tol, Leslie Woodcock, James Lovelock, and others all feel the sting of the machine they were a part of.

Boko Haram Kidnapped Girls Because of… Yep… Global Warming

Published by Papa Giorgio

From the annuls of “you thought you heard it all till…” — and it has EVERYTHING to do with the lefts inability to fight evil:

Britain’s Guardian newspaper has come up with a novel explanation for the kidnapping of over 200 schoolgirls in Nigeria. (h/t Marc Morano)

Conventional analyses have pinned the blame on the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram (which means: “Western education is forbidden”). But according to the Guardian’s Nafeez Ahmed, the real culprit is ‘climate change.’

After Breitbart quotes a bit from this article, they continue to point out that the author, Nafeez Ahmed, is a 9/11 truther as well:

The article is by no means Ahmed’s first attempt to exculpate Islamist terrorists’ actions by implying that the West is, in fact, mainly to blame. He is also a 9/11 Truther.

In fact, overwhelming evidence confirms that al-Qaeda networks in the Middle East, Central Asia, the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Asia-Pacific, have been penetrated and manipulated by Western intelligence services. Conspiraloonery? If only it was. As I argue in my 3rd book, The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism (2005), the evidence for this is extremely well-documented, deriving from innumerable, credible intelligence sources. But why? Largely to destabilize regional environments to pave the way for new “security” policies that serve to protect not people, but foreign investors taking over regional markets — especially markets with significant oil and gas deposits.

Ahmed’s work has been praised by luminaries including left-wing journalist John Pilger, who wrote:

“Nafeez Ahmed’s understanding of the post 9/11 power game, its lies, illusions and dangers, is no less than brilliant. Everyone should read this wise and powerfully illuminating book.”

…read it all…

As has been pointed out earlier… climate change causes all sorts of maladies (via The Corner):

Study: Global Warming Will Cause 180,000 More Rapes by 2099

Global warming isn’t just going to melt the Arctic and flood our cities—it’s also going to make Americans more likely to kill each other.

That’s the conclusion of a controversial new study that uses historic crime and temperature data to show that hotter weather leads to more murders, more rapes, more robberies, more assaults, and more property crimes…

…read it all…

These leftist are on the cutting edge of journalism… yuk, yuk. Breitbart provides a “COMPLETE” list of phenominom caused by Global Warming:

In case you haven’t seen his site, it purports to provide “A complete list of all the things that have been caused by global warming.”

The A section alone includes:

AIDS, Afghan poppies destroyed, African holocaust, aged deaths, poppies more potent, Africa devastated,  Africa in conflict, African aid threatened,  aggressive weeds, Air France crash, air pockets, air pressure changes,  airport farewells virtual, airport malaria, Agulhas current, Alaskan towns slowly destroyed, Al Qaeda and Taliban Being Helped, allergy increase, allergy season longer, alligators in the Thames, Alps melting, Amazon a desert, American dream end,  amphibians breeding earlier (or not),  anaphylactic reactions to bee stings,  ancient forests dramatically changed, animals head for the hills, animals shrink,  Antarctic grass flourishes, Antarctic ice grows, Antarctic ice shrinks, Antarctic sea life at risk,   anxiety treatment, algal blooms, archaeological sites threatened, Arctic bogs melt, Arctic in bloom, Arctic ice free, Arctic ice melt faster, Arctic lakes disappear,  Arctic tundra lost, Arctic warming (not), a rose by any other name smells of nothing, asteroid strike risk, asthma, Atlantic less salty, Atlantic more salty,   atmospheric circulation modified, attack of the killer jellyfish, avalanches reduced, avalanches increased,

Each entry includes a hyperlink to the article promulgating each particular spurious claim.

But nobody actually believes this stuff, surely?

Unfortunately, yes. The people who do are called liberals.

One of them is a friend of mine and, by way of a greeting, he sent me a link to this article in The Ecologist the other day. It’s headlined Time To Wake Up: the Climate Denial Beast and reports on a speech made by Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, warning on the extent to which evil climate denialists are funded to pump out their vile propaganda by the agents of Big Oil.

Senator Whitehouse invites us to be shocked by the fact that, according to research by some activist or other at a German university, “from 2003 to 2010, 140 foundations made grants totaling $558 million to 91 organizations that actively oppose climate action.”…

…read more…