NC Media Watch

NASA: Solar Cycle 24 is going to be a small cycle

Russ Steele

NASA's David Hathaway, Ph.D., Heliospheric Team Leader, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama, finally admits that Solar Cycle 24 is going to be a small cycle and that Dr. Leif Svalgaard was right back in 2006 when he predicted a small cycle.

But there also were people back at that time saying otherwise. A group of colleagues led by Leif Svalgaard, Ph.D., were looking at the sun’s polar fields and saying even at that point, the sun’s polar fields were significantly weaker than they had been before and those scientists back then predicted it was going to be a small cycle.

More details at Dalton Minimum Returns. If history is an indicator, we should be preparing for more global cooling rather than global warming. Stay Tuned.

Could Mother Nature be winning the global warming wars ?

Russ Steele

Is Mother Nature winning?  Consider these news stories from C/Net:

Britain is less concerned about climate change than any other country in the world, according to a new survey. The annual Climate Confidence Monitor found the number of people worrying about global warming worldwide has fallen by eight per cent to just over a third in the last year as the economic downturn kicked in. Just fifteen per cent of people in Britain worry about climate change and how the world responds to the problem, the lowest figure for any of the 12 countries surveyed. The figure is down from 26 per cent last year.
    --The Daily Telegraph, 2 November 2009

Concern in Australia dropped in the past year by 14 per cent - the largest drop among the developed nations surveyed.
    --ABC News, 2 November 2009

These finding are consistent with the latest Pew Research Poll on declining concern with global warming. Details here.


All three regions experienced cooler and damper weather this last year.  Now the the question is will the next year be a repeat?  Stay Tuned.

Examiner.com's First Annual Survey on Global Warming

Russ Steele

Thomas Fuller writes at the Examiner.com:

If you are tired of having everybody trying to tell you what you think, and especially if what you think isn't what's being reported, I heartily encourage you to take this survey. I will be doing the analysis for free and for fun over the next few weeks, and I hope that we will be able to break new ground on the debate over global warming.
 
Click here to get started. Examiner.com's First Annual Survey on Global Warming.
 
The introduction is below. Have fun!

First, let's start with the ground rules. Your participation is completely anonymous, and no attempt will be made to contact you for any reason as a result of your participation or anything you write in this survey.

Second, this survey is not intended to be used as an opinion poll or a census, and will not be used as such. We are not trying to find out how many people 'believe' or 'disbelieve' in global warming. Our purpose is to try and find out if there are areas of agreement on possible policy initiatives going forward.

Some alarming news, San Francisco liberals fear global warming

Russ Steele

Not happy with the results of climate changes polls showing that concern over global warming is declining, KQED the San Francisco National Public Radio station decided to do their won.  The early results are not surprising.(click for a larger image)


I took the survey and found out that I am a dismissive, even though I agreed that warming was happening, but humans have little ability to influence change.  Since the KQED's main audience is San Francisco Liberals, ooops Progressives, the results are not a big surprise. If your would like to assess your own position and broaden the validity of the survey go to this URL: http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/

You have to start here, KQED would not let me link directly to the survey, as I had already taken it.  See link to the survey at the bottom of the page "What's your climate profile?  Take the survey and find out." 

Its Time To Prepare For Another Dalton Minimum(edited)

Russ Steele

The A.P.P.L.E Center for Sustainability wants to create more reliance in our local quality of life. They want us to prepare for disruptions in our food supply by creating local food sources. The question is, are they willing to consider the possibility the real threat is not global warming caused by emissions of green house gases, but increased cooling due to another Grand Solar Minimum. Are they willing to consider that cooling will reduce our local food supply more than warming?  Last year Canada's grain production was reduced by 20% due to ongoing cooler wet weather. What if the cooling continues?  You can find the details at my latest post at The Dalton Minimum Returns. 

The Sun Defines the Climate

Russ Steele

The folks at the A.P.P.L.E Center for Sustainability want Nevada City and the surrounding region to be more sustainable and resilient under times of stress. Here is a heads up by a Russian scientist that the planners at the Sustainability Center at might want to consider - Long term global cooling.

(Habibullo Abdussamatov, Dr. Sc. - Head of Space research laboratory of the Pulkovo Observatory, Head of the Russian/Ukrainian joint project Astrometria - (translated from Russian by Lucy Hancock)

Key Excerpts: Observations of the Sun show that as for the increase in temperature, carbon dioxide is "not guilty" and as for what lies ahead in the upcoming decades, it is not catastrophic warming, but a global, and very prolonged, temperature drop. [...] Over the past decade, global temperature on the Earth has not increased; global warming has ceased, and already there are signs of the future deep temperature drop. [...] It follows that warming had a natural origin, the contribution of CO2 to it was insignificant, anthropogenic increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide does not serve as an explanation for it, and in the foreseeable future CO2 will not be able to cause catastrophic warming. The so-called greenhouse effect will not avert the onset of the next deep temperature drop, the 19th in the last 7500 years, which without fail follows after natural warming. [...] We should fear a deep temperature drop -- not catastrophic global warming. Humanity must survive the serious economic, social, demographic and political consequences of a global temperature drop, which will directly affect the national interests of almost all countries and more than 80% of the population of the Earth. A deep temperature drop is a considerably greater threat to humanity than warming. However, a reliable forecast of the time of the onset and of the depth of the global temperature drop will make it possible to adjust in advance the economic activity of humanity, to considerably weaken the crisis.

Full Study is here.

And the rest of the AP Story

Russ Steele

Steve Enos posted a comment on an AP Story by Seth Borenstein “Statistics Experts Reject Global Cooling Claims” here.  Seth has know to write misleading climate change reports in the past, this one on Sea Surface Temperature is just one example. Now we are treated to yet another misleading article. Dr. Roger Pielke at Climate Science has some thoughts on the Borenstein AP article:

Comments On AP Story “Statistics Experts Reject Global Cooling Claims”
There is a news report titled “Statistics experts reject global cooling claims” by Seth Borenstein which appeared today. The article reads

“WASHINGTON — The Earth is still warming, not cooling as some global warming skeptics are claiming, according to an analysis of global temperatures by independent statistics experts.

The review of years of temperature data was conducted at the request of The Associated Press. Talk of a cooling trend has been spreading on the Internet, fueled by some news reports, a new book and temperatures that have been cooler in a few recent years.

The statisticians, reviewing two sets of temperature data, found no trend of falling temperatures over time. And U.S. government figures show that the decade that ends in December will be the warmest in 130 years of record-keeping.

Global warming skeptics are basing their claims on an unusually hot year in 1998. They say that since then, temperatures have fallen — thus, a cooling trend. But it’s not that simple.

Since 1998, temperatures have dipped, soared, dropped again and are now rising once more. Records kept by the British meteorological office and satellite data used by climate skeptics still show 1998 as the hottest year. However, data from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA show 2005 has topped 1998.

“The last 10 years are the warmest 10-year period of the modern record,” said NOAA climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt. “Even if you analyze the trend during that 10 years, the trend is actually positive, which means warming.”

Statisticians said the ups and downs during the last decade repeat random variability in data as far back as 1880.”

This article, however, (which is not a true independent assessment if the study was completed by NOAA scientists)  is not based on the much more robust metric assessment of global warming as diagnosed by upper ocean heat content. Nor does it consider the warm bias issues with respect to surface land temperatures that we have raised in our peer reviewed papers; e.g. see and see.

The Latest Climate Change Cartoon.

This is the latest from the Chilling Effect.

Fewer Americans See Solid Evidence of Global Warming - Mother Nature is Winning

Russ Steele

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press have published a new global warming survey, and it looks like Mother Nature is winning the argument. It is hard to believe in global warming when freezing your butt off in record breaking cold weather, details here.

There has been a sharp decline over the past year in the percentage of Americans who say there is solid evidence that global temperatures are rising. And fewer also see global warming as a very serious problem – 35% say that today, down from 44% in April 2008.

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Sept. 30-Oct. 4 among 1,500 adults reached on cell phones and landlines, finds that 57% think there is solid evidence that the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades. In April 2008, 71% said there was solid evidence of rising global temperatures.

Over the same period, there has been a comparable decline in the proportion of Americans who say global temperatures are rising as a result of human activity, such as burning fossil fuels. Just 36% say that currently, down from 47% last year.

The decline in the belief in solid evidence of global warming has come across the political spectrum, but has been particularly pronounced among independents. Just 53% of independents now see solid evidence of global warming, compared with 75% who did so in April 2008.

Joe Romm's attempt to trash Superfreakanomics exposed

Russ Steele

Superfreakanomics arrive in the mail yesterday. It became a must read when Joe Romm who blogs at
ClimateProgress.org trashed the book. ClimateProgress.org is “dedicated to providing the progressive perspective on climate science, climate solutions, and climate politics.”  When the left starts attacking books before they are published, you know their is something important they want to discredit, and it becomes a must read at NC Media Watch.  Joe Romm at Climate Progress:

“Error-riddled ‘SuperFreakonomics’: New book pushes global cooling myths, sheer illogic, and ‘patent nonsense’ – and the primary climatologist it relies on, Ken Caldeira, says ‘it is an inaccurate portrayal of me’ and ‘misleading’ in ‘many’ places.”

Now for the rest of the story in a New York Times article Global Warming in SuperFreakonomics: The Anatomy of a Smear by one of the authors, Stephen J. Dubner  The full story is here, but these are the money paragraphs:

Last week, a few days before Romm’s post, Caldeira sent an e-mail to Myhrvold and cc’d me as well. It included a chain of earlier e-mails between Caldeira and Romm.

The chain begins with Joseph Romm telling Caldeira that he had read SuperFreakonomics and “I want to trash them for this insanity and ignorance.” Romm adds that “my blog is read by everyone in this area, including the media” and tells Caldeira that “I’d like a quote like ‘The authors of SuperFreakonomics have utterly misrepresented my work,’ plus whatever else you want to say.”

I understand that blogging, especially advocacy blogging, doesn’t operate under the rules of journalism (where you don’t feed quotes to people), but still: that’s quite a quote to feed to someone.

Caldeira didn’t give him the quote. He did, however, respond point-by-point to a series of statements about him in the book. “The only significant error,” he wrote to Romm, “is the line: ‘carbon dioxide is not the right villain in this fight.’ That is just wrong and I never would have said it. On the other hand, I f&@?ed up. They sent me the draft and I approved it without reading it carefully and I just missed it. … I think everyone operated in good faith, and this was just a mistake that got by my inadequate editing.”

Romm still managed to get his point across, in the headline and elsewhere:
“One sentence about Caldeira in particular is the exact opposite of what he believes (page 184): ‘Yet his research tells him that carbon dioxide is not the right villain in this fight.’ Levitt and Dubner didn’t run this quote by Caldeira, and when he saw a version from Myhrvold, he objected to it.”

Except of course Caldeira did see that line, and the rest of the chapter too, not once but twice.

But that didn’t seem to matter. While Romm’s post never actually delivered the Caldeira quotes teased in the headline – that it was “an inaccurate portrayal of me” and “misleading” – the point was clear to any reader: everything SuperFreakonomics says about global warming must be wrong because the main climate scientist they write about has refuted what he said. It’s hard to blame the bloggers who subsequently repeated this story: if you didn’t know it was false, it would have seemed pretty newsworthy. It’s also hard to misinterpret what’s going on here. Now that global warming has transcended science to become a political issue, the rules of politics apply: if you don’t like someone’s position, attack their credibility.

Hey Anna, now you know why Climate Progress has no credibility at NC Media Watch, it is not longer about the science it is all about the politics.