These items caught my eye – 17 March 2015

1: Fossil Fuels Will Save the World (Really); 2: Science Lessons for Secretary of State John F. Kerry; 3: IPCC chief wannabe van Ypersele’s communication record; 4: No evidence of actual damage to polar bear brains from environmental contaminants; 5: Temperature Adjustments At USCRN1 Stations; 6: In prime time: “The consensus of the scientists is that we don’t know it yet”!; 7: Climate scientists perform fossil-fuel funded research; 8: No, China’s wind farms don’t produce more electricity than America’s nuclear power plants; 9: Campaign to save the Climate Alarmist; 10: Wind weasels Lose $700 Million in “Investors” money! Blown Into the Wind!; Please remember to read the comments, as the information (and the links) contained in them often put the main article into context. I’m off to France until the end of April, without Internet access, so comments will sit in moderation until I get back..
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Fossil Fuels Will Save the World (Really)

Matt Ridley has an opinion piece in the WSJ which says many things far better than I can.

The environmental movement has advanced three arguments in recent years for giving up fossil fuels: (1) that we will soon run out of them anyway; (2) that alternative sources of energy will price them out of the marketplace; and (3) that we cannot afford the climate consequences of burning them.

These days, not one of the three arguments is looking very healthy. In fact, a more realistic assessment of our energy and environmental situation suggests that, for decades to come, we will continue to rely overwhelmingly on the fossil fuels that have contributed so dramatically to the world’s prosperity and progress. …….

The article is well worth reading. Fossil Fuels Will Save the World Ridley WSJ – Click here to read the full article
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Science Lessons for Secretary of State John F. Kerry

Secretary of State John F. Kerry’s recent remarks on climate change at the Atlantic Council were so scientifically illiterate that I find it difficult to believe that he managed to barely get a D in geology at Yale University. As a US citizen and geoscientist, I feel it is my patriotic and professional duty to provide Secretary Kerry with a few complimentary science lessons.

Let’s start with some basics – Click here to read the full article
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IPCC chief wannabe van Ypersele’s communication record

As Australia’s Tony Thomas had noted last October, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele an IPCC vice-chair of the modelling persuasion, threw his hat in the ring to succeed the more recently disgraced Rajendra Pachauri.

Donna Laframboise reported today that the U.K. Guardian, dedicated and dutiful propagator of all messages green, kindly gave van Ypersele a platform from which he launched his vision for the future of this (IMHO) increasingly irrelevant body.

I thought it was interesting to note that van Ypersele seems to take great pride in his past accomplishments. For example, he wrote:

For the IPCC to be relevant, it must also continue to improve its communication with policymakers and with the public. This is an area I am proud to have contributed to as Vice-chair in charge of designing the implementation plan for the IPCC Communication strategy. [emphasis added-hro]

– Click here to read the full article
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No evidence of actual damage to polar bear brains from environmental contaminants

Earlier this year we had polar bear penis bones supposedly breaking due to environmental toxins; this week we have their brains damaged.

The March 15 ScienceNordic story (“Chemical pollution is causing brain damage in polar bears”) came complete with a photo of a bear (copied below, provided by research co-author Rune Dietz) that is presumably meant to convey what a “brain damaged” polar bear might look like — if not, perhaps another photo would have been a better choice? – Click here to read the full article
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Temperature Adjustments At USCRN1 Stations

A study of US CRN1 stations, top-rated for their siting quality, shows that GHCN adjusted data produces warming trends several times larger than unadjusted data.

The unadjusted files from ghcn.v3.qcu have been scrutinized for outlier values, and for step changes indicative of non-climatic biases. In no case was the normal variability pattern interrupted by step changes. Coverages were strong, the typical history exceeding 95%, and some achieved 100%.(Measured by the % of months with a reported Tavg value out of the total months in the station’s lifetime.)

The adjusted files are another story. Typically, years of data are deleted, often several years in a row. Entire rows are erased including the year identifier, so finding the missing years is a tedious manual process looking for gaps in the sequence of years. All stations except one lost years of data through adjustments, often in recent years. At one station, four years of data from 2007 to 2010 were deleted; in another case, 5 years of data from 2002 to 2006 went missing. Strikingly, 9 stations that show no 2014 data in the adjusted file have fully reported 2014 in the unadjusted file.

It is instructive to see the effect of adjustments upon individual stations. – Click here to read the full article
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In prime time: “The consensus of the scientists is that we don’t know it yet”!

Today something unusual happened. I was watching the 7 o’clock VRT television news and within it an reportage with the title: Influence of global warming unsure. I thought that we would get the usual mindless much repeated talk about global warming, climate change, blah, blah. Boy was I wrong. What happened next took me completely by surprise.

It began rather usual (translated from Dutch):

The cyclone is being compared with cyclone Haiyan that ravaged The Philippines two years ago. There were more than 5,000 deaths back then and 600,000 lost their home. The president of Vanuatu stated that the cyclone had to do with climate change …

– Click here to read the full article
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Climate scientists perform fossil-fuel funded research

Can I interest you in some advice from hypocrites?

After pouncing on Willie Soon for not disclosing funding in his journal papers, it turned out scientist Jon Koomey had done the same thing in several of his own papers (e.g, here, here, here).

Acccording to Gavin Schmidt, any reasons Soon might have not disclosing funding are not even ‘remotely defendable’ as ‘similar post-hoc justifications have been used to excuse horrific unethical practices’.

Behind every believer hankering after purity likely lies a sinful past. Thus one finds Schmidt’s colleague Michael Mann admitting to activist-cum-activist Brendan Montaugue in The Ecologist that his own career was supported by grants from the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). Mann, who doesn’t miss an opportunity to label his opponents as ‘industry-funded’ or ‘fossil-fuel funded’, worked under scientist Barry Saltzman who he acknowledges in the Climategate emails, ‘got significant support from the EPRI through the years’.

Mann’s own work was supported by grants from the dreaded ‘coal-industry front group’ EPRI. He published not one but two papers with such acknowledgements as shown below: – Click here to read the full article
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No, China’s wind farms don’t produce more electricity than America’s nuclear power plants

OK, I am about to sound like a broken record. But, is it not time that people writing or campaigning about energy learned that the capacity of a power plant is not the same thing as the production of a power plant?

It’s rather simple really. Power plants have a rated capacity. It’s measured in megawatts or gigawatts and it tells you the plant’s maximum output. In the case of a wind farm this is the output when it is really windy. But on average it is not really windy, and often it isn’t windy at all. So, what happens? Well, instead of the plant producing, say, 1 GW all the time, it will produce something like 0.25 or 0.3 or 0.35 GW. It depends on how windy it is on average. – Click here to read the full article
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Campaign to save the Climate Alarmist

There are some species such as the Passenger Pigeon or the American Buffalo that are so numerous that no thinks they could disappear and not until too late does anyone think to protect them.

Back around 2007 when I first became a sceptic, you could go onto almost any forum in the world and be guaranteed to be the only sceptic or exceptionally, one of a small minority.

But these days even UK Guardian is so full to the brim of sceptics that it’s hard to be heard. I did find one of these isolated habitats where alarmists still thrive but I forgot to bookmark it and I’m now regretting that. These sites are now like gold-dust, secret reserves known to only a few sceptics jealously guarding their own clutch of alarmists. – Click here to read the full article
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Wind weasels Lose $700 Million in “Investors” money! Blown Into the Wind!

Pacific Hydro is a name synonymous with wind industry skulduggery in Australia: the merciless treatment of its victims at Cape Bridgewater has been added to the annals of Australian corporate infamy, right up there with Aussie asbestos pedlar, James Hardie (see our post here).

Now, its slap-dash approach to management, and all-round corporate malfeasance, has caught up with it, with an almighty vengeance.

Pac Hydro is the bastard child of IFM Investors – born of the $billions that are collected from workers and thrown into what are called “Union Super Funds” – ie “superannuation”: compulsory retirement savings schemes – owned and controlled by union heavies, like Garry Weaven and/or Labor Party front men; like former Environment Minister, Greg Combet. – Click here to read the full article
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