The Dog Ate Global Warming

[TheSarge]

By Patrick J. Michaels

Imagine if there were no reliable records of global surface temperature. Raucous policy debates such as cap-and-trade would have no scientific basis, Al Gore would at this point be little more than a historical footnote, and President Obama would not be spending this U.N. session talking up a (likely unattainable) international climate deal in Copenhagen in December.

Steel yourself for the new reality, because the data needed to verify the gloom-and-doom warming forecasts have disappeared.

Or so it seems. Apparently, they were either lost or purged from some discarded computer. Only a very few people know what really happened, and they aren’t talking much. And what little they are saying makes no sense.

In the early 1980s, with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, scientists at the United Kingdom’s University of East Anglia established the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) to produce the world’s first comprehensive history of surface temperature. It’s known in the trade as the “Jones and Wigley” record for its authors, Phil Jones and Tom Wigley, and it served as the primary reference standard for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) until 2007. It was this record that prompted the IPCC to claim a “discernible human influence on global climate.”

Putting together such a record isn’t at all easy. Weather stations weren’t really designed to monitor global climate. Long-standing ones were usually established at points of commerce, which tend to grow into cities that induce spurious warming trends in their records. Trees grow up around thermometers and lower the afternoon temperature. Further, as documented by the University of Colorado’s Roger Pielke Sr., many of the stations themselves are placed in locations, such as in parking lots or near heat vents, where artificially high temperatures are bound to be recorded.

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http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTBiMTRlMDQxNzEyMmRhZjU3ZmYzODI5MGY4ZWI5OWM=&w=MA==

[Chris_]

And here's the money quote:

All of this is much more than an academic spat. It now appears likely that the U.S. Senate will drop cap-and-trade climate legislation from its docket this fall — whereupon the Obama Environmental Protection Agency is going to step in and issue regulations on carbon-dioxide emissions. Unlike a law, which can’t be challenged on a scientific basis, a regulation can. If there are no data, there’s no science.

And while a regulation can be challenged on a scientific basis, Lord Øbamessiah has already demonstrated a penchant for determining the merits of an argument based upon whether it agrees with him or not.  If it agrees with The Øne, it's science; if it contradicts The Øne, it's merely "misinformation".

[NHSparky]

When push comes to shove, the Gorebots curl up into a ball, because they all know they've been BSing the more gullible among us.

[Chris_]

Apologies; I do not have an active link.

"Navy strategy changing along with Arctic conditions"

New London (CT) Day
Wednesday, 23 September 2009

Navy strategy changing along with Arctic conditions
 
By Jennifer Grogan 
 
Newport, R.I. - Rapidly diminishing sea ice means more ships than ever before will be able to travel through the Arctic, so the Navy is going to use an “Arctic road map” to navigate the new national security challenge.

The Navy's Task Force Climate Change will give Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead the road map next week, describing the changing conditions in the Arctic and what it means for future Navy operations.

Virtually all of the sea ice in the Arctic will melt during the summer in 25 to 30 years, said Rear Adm. David W. Titley, the Navy's senior oceanographer, who leads the task force. The ice will then “come back with a vengeance” in the winter, said Titley, who cautioned that he did not have a high degree of confidence in this estimate because of the dynamic Arctic climate.

Navy leaders can use the map to make decisions about what ships, equipment and infrastructure to invest in, Titley said Tuesday at the U.S. Naval War College during a conference on how climate change affects Arctic security policy.

”It will inform investment decisions but it will do that by understanding what our strategy is and what our missions are, and what the U.S. Navy, in concert with other government agencies and our international partners, is trying to achieve in the Arctic,” he said.

President Obama also spoke Tuesday about climate change. At a United Nations summit, he said the American people “understand the gravity of the climate threat” and “are determined to act.”

Thinning ice in the Arctic means that the oil and gas reserves that lie underneath may become available, along with a shorter shipping route between the Atlantic and Pacific and additional commercial fishing opportunities- a tantalizing prospect for nations with Arctic coastlines, the United States, Russia, Canada, Denmark (via Greenland) and Norway.

Titley was optimistic that disputes over resources and borders could be resolved using the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which he called the “governance regime” for the Arctic Ocean.

The problem is, the U.S. Senate has not ratified the convention.

”We simply do not have a seat at the table,” Titley said, adding that the Senate needs to “ratify it, pure and simple.”

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LINK: http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=a4c6856e-6bac-4d87-8483-7ae94def52f6

[Peter3_1]

We're cooling off for a few years, or so the Cosmic Ray increase says to us. Mroe cosmic rays, more very high altitude very thin clouds, the more of the sun's energy is reflected back into space.  Les energy gets to the suface, less energy at the surface, the planet cools.

Just as thermodynamics predicts! 

If the Gorean model were correct, they would have predicted this, but they did not, did they?

[Chris_]

The people who belive in all the global warming BS ranks of the CT nuts and truthers IMHO

[Chris_]

Thanks for the edit/link, Chris. 

newbiered, I'm curious as to what is your opinion on the article I posted, most specifically the Navy's confidence in the climate change of the Artic in the next 25-30 years?

[Peter3_1]

The Navy is simply preparing for a possibility. If they are wrong, so what, still can't navagate where they never could. If they do not prepare , they could be caught flat footed and unprepared to provide for the mutual defense.

It is my understanding, the CIVILIAN shipping had stopped mapping possible routes as an ice free Artic Sea seems very unlikely today.

The Navy has no such luxury, see The Art of War.