GWPF | 30 April 2015
America’s Youth Are Rebelling Against Climate Dogma
University of Alabama climatologists have released the newest version of their satellite temperature datasets. Interestingly enough, the updated satellite data came with a surprise: it lowered the Earth’s warming trend. –Michael Bastasch, Daily Caller News, 29 April 2015
The updated UAH satellite temperature data comes as scientists are looking into allegations of data tampering by government climate agencies, like NASA and NOAA. Scientists skeptical of man-made global warming argue that data adjustments made by climate agencies may not be scientifically justified. “Many people have found the extent of adjustments to the data surprising,” Terence Kealey, former vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham, said in a statement released by The Global Warming Policy Foundation. –Michael Bastasch, Daily Caller News, 29 April 2015
A group of scientists has been tasked with looking at the temperature record to find out if we’re getting the straight story about global warming. The findings promise to be interesting. Maybe we’ll finally get a definitive answer when the Global Warming Policy Foundation panel has finished its work. Whatever the results, we expect they’ll withstand an audit. A lot of people will be closely scrutinizing this project. –Editorial, Investor’s Business Daily, 28 April 2015
If you’re a Chinese resident with a knack for predicting the weather, you might be best off keeping those skills to yourself. A new regulation from the Chinese Meteorological Administration bans amateurs and enthusiasts from publicizing their own weather reports, saying that only official authorities are allowed to offer such forecasts. —Te-Ping Chen, The Wall Street Journal, 29 April 2015
1) Updated Satellite Data Shows Even Less Global Warming Than Before – Daily Caller News, 29 April 2015
2) Editorial: Science Project Can Finally Answer Global Warming Question – Investor’s Business Daily, 28 April 2015
3) Nigel Lawson: Drumming Up Support For The GWPF In New York – The Spectator, 2 May 2015
4) Young Americans’ Growing Distrust of Science – Harvard Political Review, 29 April 2015
5) America’s Youth Are Rebelling Against Climate Dogma – Jo Nova, 30 April 2015
6) And Finally: China Enforces Consensus, Bans Unofficial Weather Reports – The Wall Street Journal, 29 April 2015
The worm is turning with an uptick in skeptical thinking coming from the late-Millennials (born after 1994) who are just now starting to reach a voting age. This group was raised on climate dogma and relentless propaganda, and the age-old rebellion of youth is starting to kick in. It used to be that the older the survey group, the more skeptical it was. Youth are easily fooled by passion and name-calling. But new evidence suggests the rebellion factor is kicking in. —Jo Nova, 30 April 2015
Despite the overwhelming evidence and scientific consensus amongst experts in the field, climate cynicism persists. Presumably, many doubt the ability of scientists to honestly report the data and trends they observe in the climate. While it might be easy to believe that this cynicism has an ideological flavor, Republicans doubting climate change is not the entire problem. According to the HPOP 2015 data, only 56 percent of respondents trusted scientists to do the right thing most or all of the time. –Matthew Estes, Harvard Political Review, 29 April 2015
The purpose of the trip to New York was to drum up US support for the think tank I founded in 2009, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, and its campaigning arm, the Global Warming Policy Forum, in the company of our outstanding director, Benny Peiser. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, the GWPF has a global reach, and its international influence is growing. Moreover, unlike the US think tanks involved in the climate change issues, we also (to use the American expression) reach across the aisle: we are rigorously non-partisan, and in that sense non-political. –Nigel Lawson, The Spectator, 2 May 2015
China is set to ban unofficial weather forecasts. Regulations to take force on Friday ban predictions on a wide variety of indicators from “wind speed, air temperature, humidity” to predicting disasters like “typhoons”, “sandstorms” and “haze”, according to the China Meteorological Administration. The China Meteorological Administration has said previously the rules are intended to prevent public panic caused by false predictions. —AFP, 30 April 2015
1) Updated Satellite Data Shows Even Less Global Warming Than Before
Daily Caller News, 29 April 2015
Michael Bastasch
University of Alabama climatologists have released the newest version of their satellite temperature datasets. Interestingly enough, the updated satellite data came with a surprise: it lowered the Earth’s warming trend.
Version 6 of the satellite data shows faster warming in the early part of the satellite record, which stretches from Dec. 1978 to March. 2015, but shows reduced, or even eliminated, warming in the latter part of the record, wrote climatologists Roy Spencer, John Christy and William Braswell. UAH Version 6 satellite data now shows a decreased warming trend of 0.114 degrees Celsius per decade, compared to Version 5.6’s 0.140 degree trend.
This includes a decrease in the warming trend for the U.S. since the late 1970s. Spencer, Christy and Brasell noted that the U.S. “trend decreased from +0.23 to +0.17 C/decade” and the “Arctic region changed from +0.43 to +0.23 C/decade.”
“Near-zero trends exist in the region around Antarctica,” according to the UAH scientists.
“Note that in the early part of the record, Version 6 has somewhat faster warming than in Version 5.6, but then the latter part of the record has reduced (or even eliminated) warming, producing results closer to the behavior of the [Remote Sensing Systems] satellite dataset,” the scientists wrote.
“This is partly due to our new diurnal drift adjustment, especially for the NOAA-15 satellite,” the scientists added. “Even though our approach to that adjustment (described later) is empirical, it is interesting to see that it gives similar results to the RSS approach, which is based upon climate model calculations of the diurnal cycle in temperature.
Version 6 also shows that land areas have warmed faster than ocean areas. Land areas have warmed at a rate of 0.19 degrees Celsius per decade while ocean areas have only warmed at 0.08 degrees per decade — both of these, however, are below warming trends shown by surface thermometer data.
The updated UAH satellite temperature data comes as scientists are looking into allegations of data tampering by government climate agencies, like NASA and NOAA. Scientists skeptical of man-made global warming argue that data adjustments made by climate agencies may not be scientifically justified.
“Many people have found the extent of adjustments to the data surprising,” Terence Kealey, former vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham, said in a statement released by The Global Warming Policy Foundation.
Skeptics argue that NOAA, for example, makes adjustments that artificially cool past temperature data while warming more recent records. This creates a significantly bigger warming trend than is borne out in the raw temperature data, argue skeptics.
“While we believe that the 20th century warming is real, we are concerned by claims that the actual trend is different from – or less certain than – has been suggested,” said Kealey, who has been appointed chairman of the foundation’s investigative task force. “We hope to perform a valuable public service by getting everything out into the open.”
NOAA justifies these adjustments by saying they are necessary to correct for “biases” in the raw data. Corrections made by NOAA help make the data more accurate, they argue. NOAA’s temperature readings are based on surface thermometers from weather stations, buoys and such.
Spencer himself has questioned climate data adjustments made by NOAA, but acknowledges adjustments to raw data (whether from weather stations or satellites) are necessary for accuracy. That is, if the problem can be proven to exist.
“Being the co-developer of a climate dataset (UAH satellite temperatures) I understand the need to make adjustments for known errors in the data … when you can quantitatively demonstrate an error exists,” Spencer wrote in March.
“But a variety of errors in data measurement and collection would typically have both positive and negative signs,” Spencer and his colleagues wrote. “In contrast, the thermometer data apparently need to be adjusted in such a way that almost always leads to greater and greater warming trends.”
Satellite data also needs adjustments, hence the recent update. For example, satellites need to be recalibrated, their orbits change, and they experience channel failures. This also means software and methodology updates as well.
2) Editorial: Science Project Can Finally Answer Global Warming Question
Investor’s Business Daily, 28 April 2015
A group of scientists has been tasked with looking at the temperature record to find out if we’re getting the straight story about global warming. The findings promise to be interesting.
When phrases such as “hide the decline” and “Mike’s Nature trick” were uncovered in a batch of emails hacked from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, some said it appeared that researchers were doctoring data to make it look like Earth is warming. The emails caused a not-small stir in 2010 as many who had doubts about man’s role in climate change became convinced scientists had corrupted data to fit their narrative.
Five years later, the temperature record is still a point of contention. One side says the globe hasn’t warmed in 16 to 18 years. The other side says what’s happened over that period doesn’t matter because warming has merely paused.
Then there are the data differences. Some researchers have constructed a temperature record from weather- station readings around the world. Others say the only trustworthy data are those provided by satellites.
Muddling the issue even more are the “adjustments” many scientists have made to the record. Writing on the Climate Etc. blog, Zeke Hausfather says the “adjustments to century-scale U.S. temperature trends lends itself to an unfortunate narrative that ‘government bureaucrats are cooking the books.'”
Hausfather assures everyone that “having worked with many of the scientists in question,” he can “say with certainty that there is no grand conspiracy to artificially warm the earth.”
Others aren’t so kind. Skeptic Anthony Watts said “in the business and trading world, people go to jail for such manipulations of data.” The Global Warming Policy Foundation, which is behind the project to examine the record, merely notes that “the adjusted data exhibit a much larger warming trend than the raw data.”
Maybe we’ll finally get a definitive answer when the Global Warming Policy Foundation panel has finished its work. The group has been accused of being a climate change denier, but its lineup of experts is not stacked top to bottom with nonbelievers.
Whatever the results, we expect they’ll withstand an audit. A lot of people will be closely scrutinizing this project.
3) Nigel Lawson: Drumming Up Support For The GWPF In New York
The Spectator, 2 May 2015
I have escaped this rather depressing election campaign by retreating to my home in la France profonde — to be precise, in Armagnac, in the heart of Gascony. My only outing, from which I have just returned, was a brief visit to New York, travelling there and back in the giant Airbus 380. The purpose of the trip was to drum up US support for the think tank I founded in 2009, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, and its campaigning arm, the Global Warming Policy Forum, in the company of our outstanding director, Benny Peiser.
Thanks to the wonders of the internet, the GWPF has a global reach, and its international influence is growing. Moreover, unlike the US think tanks involved in the climate change issues, we also (to use the American expression) reach across the aisle: we are rigorously non-partisan, and in that sense non-political. It was a hectic schedule of meetings and speeches, and a relief to get back each night to the civilised comfort of the determinedly old-fashioned oak-panelled Harvard Club.
The visit was a timely one, given the UN conference to be held at Paris later this year with the objective of agreeing a successor to the lapsed Kyoto decarbonisation agreement, this time on a genuinely global basis, involving China, India, and the rest of the developing world. Of course, it is complete madness.
The burning of fossil fuels has had three consequences. First, it has provided — and for the foreseeable future will continue to provide — the cheapest and most reliable source of energy, which in turn has raised living standards immeasurably, enabling a substantial reduction in poverty, with its attendant evils of malnutrition, preventable disease and premature death. Its abandonment would be hugely harmful to the world’s poor.
Second, by releasing additional carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, it has had a well-attested and measurable effect in stimulating plant growth, greening the planet and improving its biosphere to the benefit of human and animal life in general. Third, the increased atmospheric carbon dioxide can also, other things being equal (which they may not be), be expected to make the planet a slightly warmer place. This last would in turn bring some benefits (notably to human health) and some disadvantages. But to suggest that these disadvantages (to which we can in any case adapt, as mankind has successfully adapted to widely different temperatures around the world) outweigh the massive benefits from the use of fossil fuels, is — to repeat — madness. Sensibly, both China and India reject the idea of a legally binding cap on their emissions, making a ‘voluntary’ agreement at Paris meaningless.
4) Young Americans’ Growing Distrust of Science
Harvard Political Review, 29 April 2015
Matthew Estes
The growing distrust among Americans towards scientists and their work is well documented. In an era in which scientific output doubles nearly every nine years, it is hard for even trained professionals to keep up with the latest scientific breakthroughs and developments in their own field, let alone in separate fields.
The amount of research done is so extraordinary that distinguishing real science from “junk” science is a daunting task for even the most experienced researchers, and some studies suggest that because scientists cannot devote enough time to each paper many good studies are slipping away into obscurity.
Amidst this backdrop, it is perhaps unsurprising that many Americans are losing faith in an institution that has been a sizable engine of economic growth, the driver of technological advancement, and solution to medical quandaries that have saved countless lives over the last century. While a healthy amount of skepticism and fact checking is prudent and necessary to promote useful, accurate research, the focus of much of the public’s discussion of science today is counterproductive cynicism that fails to recognize a scientific consensus as valid when it is.
Perhaps the most prominent example of Americans failing to recognize a well-tested and proven scientific consensus is in the field of climate change and global warming. According to over 18 different scientific bodies and 97 percent of peer-reviewed climate studies, scientists agree that climate change is happening and is very likely due to human activity.
Despite the overwhelming evidence and scientific consensus amongst experts in the field, climate cynicism persists. According to the 2015 Harvard Public Opinion Project, 23 percent of young adults when asked to describe their view on climate change selected the choice: “Global warming is a theory that has not yet been proven.” Among self-described Republicans the proportion is even higher, at 42 percent of respondents.
Presumably, many of these respondents doubt the ability of scientists to honestly report the data and trends they observe in the climate. Some Republicans have gone farther than just saying climate change is not a proven, settled theory and said that those who believe in man-made climate change are decidedly wrong. […]
While it might be easy to believe that this cynicism has an ideological flavor, Republicans doubting climate change is not the entire problem. According to the HPOP 2015 data, only 56 percent of respondents trusted scientists to do the right thing most or all of the time. The remainder of respondents answered that they trust scientists only some of the time (34 percent) or never (10 percent).
5) America’s Youth Are Rebelling Against Climate Dogma
Jo Nova, 30 April 2015
The X-Gens will be the maximal climate believers. The worm is turning with an uptick in skeptical thinking coming from the late-Millennials (born after 1994) who are just now starting to reach a voting age*. This group was raised on climate dogma and relentless propaganda, and the age-old rebellion of youth is starting to kick in. The big-scare-campaign may have missed its moment; it’s been pushed too hard for too long. Not only have the PDO and other natural cycles rolled into unfriendly cooler-wetter zones, but the generational wheel is rolling too.
It used to be that the older the survey group, the more skeptical it was. Youth are easily fooled by passion and name-calling. But new evidence suggests the rebellion factor is kicking in: 20% of 18-20 year olds in the US are implacable skeptics, and 23% are unconvinced. After twenty years of propaganda 55% of the generation “believe”, and only 12% are passionate. More of the same is not going to increase that. There is real hope here.
6) And Finally: China Enforces Consensus, Bans Unofficial Weather Reports
The Wall Street Journal, 29 April 2015
Te-Ping Chen
If you’re a Chinese resident with a knack for predicting the weather, you might be best off keeping those skills to yourself.
A new regulation from the Chinese Meteorological Administration bans amateurs and enthusiasts from publicizing their own weather reports, saying that only official authorities are allowed to offer such forecasts.
The regulation, which goes into effect Friday, covers any weather predictions involving “clouds, wind direction, wind speed, air temperature, humidity levels” as well as visibility and more. Those who distribute false or manipulated weather information and “create a negative impact on society” with such reports are liable to be fined as much as 50,000 yuan (around $8,000).
Amateur weather nerds span history and the globe, from Thomas Jefferson’s meticulous catalogues of the temperature and precipitation at Monticello to the many modern-day hobbyists at the U.K.’s Royal Meteorological Society. Weather obsessives in the U.S. were fiercely upset, for example, when in 2012 the consumer-facing Weather Channel announced plans to buy the Weather Underground, a beloved crowd-sourced platform built by weather-loving amateurs.
Shanghai-based recreational meteorologist Ni Shun, who shares his predictions on various social media platforms, said he thought the regulation was aimed at hobbyists with a hunger for fame who exaggerate forecasts to terrify people.
