These items caught my eye – 22 May 2013

A mixed bag of items in this issue. A look at EU energy policy (lol); A basic look at what we mean by Climatology (not as the IPCC define it); Two items on The Royal Society and its struggle to live up to its motto; Proof that cartoonists should stick to drawing and stay out of the climate debate; Lessons not drawn on previous tornadoes in the US; Power has corrupted Big Government Climate Science, not a happy read. Please remember to read the comments, as the information (and the links) contained in them often put the main article into context.. If you follow a site that is, maybe, a bit off the beaten track and think it would be of interest, please contact me and I’ll take a look.
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Green Energy: The worm turns

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Roger Helmer MEP

I have been arguing for a long time that EU energy policy is a disaster for competitiveness. It is driving up energy costs, forcing industries, and investment, and jobs out of the EU altogether. And at the same time, it is leaving millions of households and pensioners in fuel poverty, many forced to choose between eating and heating.

And after all that, it is not clear that it is having any impact at all on emissions. Indeed it may, perversely, increase them, by forcing industry out to other jurisdictions with lower environmental standards. I understand that a ton of steel made in China results in twice the emissions as the same ton of steel made in Europe.

Click here to read the full article
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CLIMATOLOGY

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Ken McMurtrie

Reblogged from VeroNetworK:

Worth reblogging because it highlights the complexity of our global heat “equation”. A multitude of variables, including the Sun as the only source of heating energy, making the science complex and difficult to pin point. Computer models have failed to make sensible predictions, an outcome unsurprising to open-minded scientists and a methodology that only a dreamer would rely on.

Click here to read the full article
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GWPF takes up Sir Paul Nurse’s suggestion – Offers to host climate debate

Posted on May 22, 2013 by tallbloke

Popcorn futures explode. But joking apart, I think (hope) this will be productive. Tim Palmer is realistic about model uncertainty (apart from being clueless about the magnitude of uncertainty around solar caused climate variation). Brian Hoskins is candid (though behind the curve on the latest findings).

GWPF INVITES ROYAL SOCIETY FELLOWS FOR CLIMATE CHANGE DISCUSSION

Click here to read the full article
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The Royal Society Gets Radical

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Donna Laframboise

When the word “radical” is used four times in two sentences, something is amiss.

The Royal Society was founded back in the 1660s and serves as the “national Academy of science in the UK.”

Last year, Andrew Montford wrote a sobering report about it’s recent capture by environmental activists (see my post here).

Click here to read the full article
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SkepticalScience Now Argues Against Foster & Rahmsorf (2011)

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Bob Tisdale

SkepticalScience recently produced a YouTube video which claimed to show that the rate of global warming has not slowed in recent years. See their post here, which states:

This replicates the result of a study by Foster and Rahmstorf (2011) under slightly different assumptions.

I later produced a video that explained one of the flaws in their approach. Basically, I’ve illustrated and discussed why they cannot use linear regression analyses to remove the effects of El Niño and La Niña events.

Now blogger Clyde informs WattsUpWithThat that SkepticalScience is saying they will be removing their video because it does “…not represent a consensus in the peer-reviewed results…” See the SkepticalScience post Has the rate of surface warming changed? 16 years revisited. (Thanks, Clyde.)

Click here to read the full article
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Mother Nature’s Message To Mankind

Posted on May 22, 2013 by papundits

By Alan Caruba

After a tornado tore through Moore, Oklahoma in 1999, people returned and rebuilt their homes and other structures destroyed by it.

Many of the homes, instead of including a basement, were rebuilt on concrete slabs that offer no protection when high winds tear them loose. The elementary school was believed to be strong enough to protect students, but it wasn’t.

No lessons were learned from that tornado, although meteorological systems have been put in place to provide some warning.

I did not have to wait for the usual pronouncements from various environmental organizations and individual “experts” that the tornadoes that struck Oklahoma were the result of “global warming” or “climate change”, but tornadoes are a product of weather systems all around the world and have occurred for the millennia of Earth’s existence.

Click here to read the full article
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Draft National Assessment on Climate Change: Politicization of the Scientific Method

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Robert Bradley Jr.

“Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely,” Lord Acton wrote in 1887. The current scandals in Washington, DC remind the entire political spectrum about how dangerous concentrated power is with THE institution that possesses a legal monopoly on the initiation of force.

Power has corrupted Big Government Climate Science too. In our country, Exhibit A is the multi-agency U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) whose periodic reports on the impact of manmade climate change on America are one-sided alarmism with policy activism and bigger budgets being the goal. Reports issued in 2000 and 2009 will be joined by a third report this year.

Click here to read the full article
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