Five Holiday Gifts for Skeptical Science readers

1 December, 2013 by

Skeptical Science has suggested some “gifts for skeptics” (i.e. proper skeptics, that is), so in the spirit of Christmas, here are ACM’s ideas for the warmist in your life:

The SkS Shredder

Inconvenient data? No problem with this shredder. Just watch the Medieval Warm Period disappear. Forget having to change your models to fit reality, simply change reality to fit your models! Nothing could be easier!

sks_shredder

Simples!

Escalator News

Skeptical Science loves escalators, so why not buy that special person a subscription to Elevator World?

Elevator_world

Fascinating reading!

“ELEVATOR WORLD is the premier publication for the international building transportation industry and has been publishing the latest news, newest innovations, imperative safety issues, current code requirements, events coverage and accessibility, legal and maintenance issues since January 1953.”

And don’t worry, it has plenty about escalators as well!

Print edition, just $125. Order here.

The Skeptical Science Consensus Calculator

Do you need to keep repeating the fake statistic that 97% of scientists agree with the consensus on global warming, when in reality the figure is barely half that? Well, now your troubles are over with the new Consensus Calculator. Specially designed, this clever device will ensure you only get the result you want, every time.

Easy peasy!

Easy peasy!

Karl Popper – The Logic of Scientific Discovery

Why not find out what real scientists do by reading on of the essential texts on the scientific method. A lot of this will come as a shock to Skeptical Science readers, so best read it sitting down. It’s even available on Kindle, so do yourselves a favour and work out the difference between science and propaganda.

Get ready for a roller coaster ride, folks!

A real page turner for warmists

And finally, to show that special person how much you care…

Yes, it’s the new I “heart” Lew mug. Lovingly crafted and designed, this gift will really send the right message…

lew_mug

Show him you love him…

Available from the ACM Cafepress shop here, a bargain at just $15.99.

Merry Christmas!

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , , , ,

Roman and Medieval periods warmer than today

12 July, 2012 by

Cooling trend?

Another story you won’t see anywhere on the ABC, firmly stuck in its groupthink mode and working itself up into a lather plugging a litany of dire and alarmist statements from a symposium on coral reefs, which has predicted, amongst other things, rises in sea levels of 1.7m by the next century (far exceeding even the “gold standard” IPCC projection).

I wonder if a “coral reef symposium” would get any media interest at all if it didn’t follow the well worn-path of alarmism and links to man-made climate change? Probably not.

And why, I wonder, did the ABC choose not to report on a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change that showed the Roman and Medieval periods were actually warmer than the present, without any help from man-made CO2? Because it doesn’t fit the rusted-on groupthink, maybe?

A new study measuring temperatures over the past two millennia has concluded that in fact the temperatures seen in the last decade are far from being the hottest in history.

A large team of scientists making a comprehensive study of data from tree rings say that in fact global temperatures have been on a falling trend for the past 2,000 years and they have often been noticeably higher than they are today – despite the absence of any significant amounts of human-released carbon dioxide in the atmosphere back then.

“We found that previous estimates of historical temperatures during the Roman era and the Middle Ages were too low,” says Professor-Doktor Jan Esper of the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, one of the scientists leading the study. “Such findings are also significant with regard to climate policy.” (source)

They certainly are. But don’t expect such policies to change anytime soon.

Warmist journal New Scientist does its best to prop up the consensus and wheels out Michael “Stick” Mann to rubbish the results:

The finding does not change our understanding of the warming power of carbon dioxide. In fact, it shows that human CO2 emissions have interrupted a long cooling period that would ultimately have delivered the next ice age. [So we’ve stopped an ice age? I would have thought that was probably quite good news…]

Esper says temperature reconstructions will have to be redone because past studies probably underestimated temperatures during the medieval warm period and other warm periods going back to Roman times. The further back in time, the greater the underestimate would be.

But others have doubts. [Michael] Mann argues that Esper’s tree-ring measurements come from high latitudes and reflect only summer temperatures. “The implications of this study are vastly overstated by the authors,” he says. (source)

Because when you’re an activist first and a scientist second, like Mann and the rest of the Hockey Team, your mind is firmly closed to even the possibility of contradictory evidence.

Link to paper here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Evidence that Medieval Warm Period was global

24 March, 2012 by

MWP was global?

“We must get rid of the MWP” a certain warmist once said, and who can blame him? Here was a period in recent history where temperatures were warmer than today without any assistance from man-made emissions.

Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick obliterated both it and the Little Ice Age through the use of some tricky algorithms which McIntyre and McKittrick debunked comprehensively. The IPCC, whilst not erasing it completely from the historical record, claims that it was a “local event” in the Northern Hemisphere only and therefore not a genuinely global phenomenon, thus preserving the modern warm period as unusual.

But now evidence lends weight to the argument that the MWP was a global event, with effects reaching Antarctica:

More peer-reviewed science contradicting the warming-alarmist “scientific consensus” was announced yesterday, as a new study shows that the well-documented warm period which took place in medieval times was not limited to Europe, or the northern hemisphere: it reached all the way to Antarctica.

The research involved the development of a new means of assessing past temperatures, to add to existing methods such as tree ring analysis and ice cores. In this study, scientists analysed samples of a crystal called ikaite, which forms in cold waters.

“Ikaite is an icy version of limestone,” explains earth-sciences prof Zunli Lu. “The crystals are only stable under cold conditions and actually melt at room temperature.”

Down in the Antarctic peninsula that isn’t a problem, and Lu and his colleagues were able to take samples which had been present for hundreds of years and date their formation. The structure of Ikaite, it turns out, varies measurably depending on the temperature when it forms, allowing boffins to construct an accurate past temperature record.

A proper temperature record for Antarctica is particularly interesting, as it illuminates one of the main debates in global-warming/climate-change: namely, were the so-called Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age merely regional, or were they global events? The medieval warmup experienced by northern Europeans from say 900AD to 1250AD seems to have been at least as hot as anything seen in the industrial era. If it was worldwide in extent that would strongly suggest that global warming may just be something that happens from time to time, not something caused by miniscule concentrations of CO2 (the atmosphere is 0.04 per cent CO2 right now; this figure might climb to 0.07 per cent in the medium term).

The oft-mentioned “scientific consensus”, based in large part on the work of famous climate-alarmist scientists Michael Mann and Phil Jones and reflected in the statements of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), says that isn’t true. The IPCC consensus is that the medieval warming – and the “Little Ice Age” which followed it – only happened in Europe and maybe some other northern areas. They were local events only, and globally the world was cooler than it is now. The temperature increase seen in the latter half of the 20th century is a new thing caused by humanity’s carbon emissions.

Lu and his colleagues’ new work, however, indicates that in fact the medieval warm period and little ice age were both felt right down to Antarctica. (source)

This also inconveniently shows that the science isn’t quite settled just yet.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Ice core data shows Greenland warmer in the past

11 February, 2012 by

Greenland temperatures (click to enlarge)

It appears that in Greenland at least, the current warming cannot be said to be “unprecedented”, since similar magnitudes and rates of warming are present in several previous eras. Man certainly didn’t cause those warming periods, so natural climate change obviously had a significant effect on Greenland temperatures over the past 4000 years.

In a paper entitled “High variability of Greenland surface temperature over the past 4000 years estimated from trapped air in an ice core” the authors state:

… we reconstruct Greenland surface snow temperature variability over the past 4000 years at the GISP2 site (near the Summit of the Greenland ice sheet; hereafter referred to as Greenland temperature) with a new method that utilises argon and nitrogen isotopic ratios from occluded air bubbles. The estimated average Greenland snow temperature over the past 4000 years was −30.7°C with a standard deviation of 1.0°C and exhibited a long-term decrease of roughly 1.5°C, which is consistent with earlier studies. The current decadal average surface temperature (2001–2010) at the GISP2 site is −29.9°C. The record indicates that warmer temperatures were the norm in the earlier part of the past 4000 years, including century-long intervals nearly 1°C warmer than the present decade (2001–2010). Therefore, we conclude that the current decadal mean temperature in Greenland has not exceeded the envelope of natural variability over the past 4000 years, a period that seems to include part of the Holocene Thermal Maximum. 

However, in order to get it past the pal-review system, the following caveat was inserted to appease the headbangers:

Notwithstanding this conclusion, climate models project that if anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions continue, the Greenland temperature would exceed the natural variability of the past 4000 years sometime before the year 2100.

Unfortunately, it does little to dampen the effect of the preceding paragraph. Namely even with the additional CO2 presently in the atmosphere and its accepted small warming effect, Greenland was still warmer in the past.

Abstract is here.

(h/t Climate Depot and C3 Headlines)

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

Global warming good news for Greenland

7 August, 2010 by

Greener by the day

But, but, but… global warming [er, surely climate change?] is always bad news, right? Not, apparently, for the good folk of frozen Greenland:

Much has been written about Greenland’s melting ice cap, but rapidly changing climate may be opening up new possibilities for agriculture in the south of the country.

Historically dependent on imported food from Europe and government subsidies, Greenland currently flies or ships in almost all of its fresh fruit, vegetables, and livestock feed.

But rising temperatures provide a real opportunity to bolster the country’s fragile farming industry, which helping it become more self-sufficient.

Sky News visited a sheep farm in Qassiarsuk, where the Vikings first set foot when they colonised this land.

The business is run by young Greenlandic farmer Joorut Knudsen, 29, who took over from his father four years ago.

He told us he had more than doubled the size of the farm since then, and if the weather conditions continue to improve he planned to do at least the same again.

‘It is warmer,’ he said.

‘It would help us if it (got) warmer and warmer in South Greenland so we could have more farming.

‘We have the tractors, cutting machines, and equipment just like Europe so we just need bigger farms, more land, and of course, more rain.’

Less cold, more agriculture – gee, sounds kind of like something familiar, doesn’t it? Oh yes, I remember, the Medieval Warm Period, when the Vikings lived and farmed there, and there were no anthropogenic carbon emissions, coal fired power stations or SUVs. That’s why they called it “Green” land. Duh.

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Enjoy the warmth while it lasts

2 November, 2009 by

Lawrence Solomon writes in the Financial Post:

Thank your lucky stars to be alive on Earth at this time. Our planet is usually in a deep freeze. The last million years have cycled through Ice Ages that last about 100,000 years each, with warmer slivers of about 10,000 years in between.

We are in-betweeners, and just barely — we live in (gasp!) year 10,000 or so after the end of the last ice age. But for our good fortune, we might have been born in the next Ice Age.

Our luck is even better than that. Those 10,000-year warm spells aren’t all cosy-warm. They include brutal Little Ice Ages such as the 500-year-long Little Ice Age that started about 600 years ago. Fortunately, we weren’t around during its fiercest periods when Finland lost one-third of its population, Iceland half, and most of Canada became uninhabitable — even the Inuit fled. While the cold spells within the 10,000 year warm spells aren’t as brutal as a Little Ice Age, they can nevertheless make us huddle in gloom, such as the period in history from about 400 AD to 900 AD, which we know as the Dark Ages. We’ve lucked out twice, escaping the cold spells within the warm spells, making us inbetweeners within the inbetween periods. How good is that?

Read it here. (h/t Climate Change Fraud)

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,
%d bloggers like this: