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View Full Version : Leading Global Warming Believer Now Admits There Hasn't Been Any for 15 Years




torchbearer
02-15-2010, 08:05 PM
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,586025,00.html

The scientist behind the so-called "climate-gate" e-mail scandal now admits there has been no statistically significant global warming since 1995.

Professor Phil Jones also tells the BBC that scientists are unsure whether the Medieval Warm Period was actually warmer than current temperatures. Some skeptics say that is the first time a senior scientist working with the U.N. report on climate change has admitted the possibility that the time between 800 and 1300 A.D. could have actually been warmer than present temperatures. That would be a blow to global warming believers.

Jones also admitted some of his weather data was not organized well enough and that contributed to his refusal to share raw data with critics. But Jones maintains he's just a scientist doing a job: "I have no agenda."

torchbearer
02-15-2010, 08:06 PM
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703630404575053781465774008.html?m od=googlenews_wsj

More embarrassments for the U.N. and 'settled' science.

It has been a bad—make that dreadful—few weeks for what used to be called the "settled science" of global warming, and especially for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that is supposed to be its gold standard.

First it turns out that the Himalayan glaciers are not going to melt anytime soon, notwithstanding dire U.N. predictions. Next came news that an IPCC claim that global warming could destroy 40% of the Amazon was based on a report by an environmental pressure group. Other IPCC sources of scholarly note have included a mountaineering magazine and a student paper.

Since the climategate email story broke in November, the standard defense is that while the scandal may have revealed some all-too-human behavior by a handful of leading climatologists, it made no difference to the underlying science. We think the science is still disputable. But there's no doubt that climategate has spurred at least some reporters to scrutinize the IPCC's headline-grabbing claims in a way they had rarely done previously.

Take the rain forest claim. In its 2007 report, the IPCC wrote that "up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation; this means that the tropical vegetation, hydrology and climate system in South America could change very rapidly to another steady state."

But as Jonathan Leake of London's Sunday Times reported last month, those claims were based on a report from the World Wildlife Fund, which in turn had fundamentally misrepresented a study in the journal Nature. The Nature study, Mr. Leake writes, "did not assess rainfall but in fact looked at the impact on the forest of human activity such as logging and burning."

The IPCC has relied on World Wildlife Fund studies regarding the "transformation of natural coastal areas," the "destruction of more mangroves," "glacial lake outbursts causing mudflows and avalanches," changes in the ecosystem of the "Mesoamerican reef," and so on. The Wildlife Fund is a green lobby that believes in global warming, and its "research" reflects its advocacy, not the scientific method.

The IPCC has also cited a study by British climatologist Nigel Arnell claiming that global warming could deplete water resources for as many as 4.5 billion people by the year 2085. But as our Anne Jolis reported in our European edition, the IPCC neglected to include Mr. Arnell's corollary finding, which is that global warming could also increase water resources for as many as six billion people.

The IPCC report made aggressive claims that "extreme weather-related events" had led to "rapidly rising costs." Never mind that the link between global warming and storms like Hurricane Katrina remains tenuous at best. More astonishing (or, maybe, not so astonishing) is that the IPCC again based its assertion on a single study that was not peer-reviewed. In fact, nobody can reliably establish a quantifiable connection between global warming and increased disaster-related costs. In Holland, there's even a minor uproar over the report's claim that 55% of the country is below sea level. It's 26%.

Meanwhile, one of the scientists at the center of the climategate fiasco has called into question other issues that the climate lobby has claimed are indisputable. Phil Jones, who stepped down as head of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit amid the climate email scandal, told the BBC that the world may well have been warmer during medieval times than it is now.

This raises doubts about how much our current warming is man-made as opposed to merely another of the natural climate shifts that have taken place over the centuries. Mr. Jones also told the BBC there has been no "statistically significant" warming over the past 15 years, though he considers this to be temporary.

***
All of this matters because the IPCC has been advertised as the last and definitive word on climate science. Its reports are the basis on which Al Gore, President Obama and others have claimed that climate ruin is inevitable unless the world reorganizes its economies with huge new taxes on carbon. Now we are discovering the U.N. reports are sloppy political documents intended to drive the climate lobby's regulatory agenda.

The lesson of climategate and now the IPCC's shoddy sourcing is that the claims of the global warming lobby need far more rigorous scrutiny.

sevin
02-15-2010, 08:28 PM
wow

paulitics
02-15-2010, 08:46 PM
Does anyone else think Toto has alread pulled away the curtain?

YouTube - Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWyCCJ6B2WE)

Matthew Zak
02-15-2010, 08:50 PM
How quickly the public will totally forget about this, and embrace state-sponsored global cooling theories within 20 years.

american.swan
02-15-2010, 09:12 PM
There's an update to the story that claims the original article is taken out of context; aka Medina style. I tweeted the update.

http://j.mp/aaMGmy

jmdrake
02-15-2010, 09:43 PM
There's an update to the story that claims the original article is taken out of context; aka Medina style. I tweeted the update.

http://j.mp/aaMGmy

From the Fox News article:
The scientist behind the so-called "climate-gate" e-mail scandal now admits there has been no statistically significant global warming since 1995.

From your "update":
"Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods."


The "update" doesn't change anything. He has a statistically insignificant positive trend. That's not worth changing policy over.

BenIsForRon
02-15-2010, 09:56 PM
Got anything that isn't from a Rupert Murdoch owned media outlet?

jmdrake
02-15-2010, 10:24 PM
Got anything that isn't from a Rupert Murdoch owned media outlet?

The BBC is not Murdoch owned.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm

B - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming

Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

C - Do you agree that from January 2002 to the present there has been statistically significant global cooling?

No. This period is even shorter than 1995-2009. The trend this time is negative (-0.12C per decade), but this trend is not statistically significant.

Statistically insignificant global warming from 1995 to present...statistically insignificant global cooling from 2002 to present.

BenIsForRon
02-16-2010, 12:13 AM
Ok, so he said it is hard to get anything statistically significant in such a short time period. What's the story?

devil21
02-16-2010, 05:30 AM
Ok, so he said it is hard to get anything statistically significant in such a short time period. What's the story?

Yet they claim expert knowledge and can model the future from data from a hundred years ago before the sensors and weather stations were up and running. :rolleyes:

jmdrake
02-16-2010, 07:43 AM
Ok, so he said it is hard to get anything statistically significant in such a short time period. What's the story?

Well that's part of the story. Here's another part.


A - Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?

An initial point to make is that in the responses to these questions I've assumed that when you talk about the global temperature record, you mean the record that combines the estimates from land regions with those from the marine regions of the world. CRU produces the land component, with the Met Office Hadley Centre producing the marine component.

Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length. As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different (see numbers below).

I have also included the trend over the period 1975 to 2009, which has a very similar trend to the period 1975-1998.

So, in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other.

I'm sure you would agree that the rates of human global carbon emissions during that period were not the same, yet the warming trends were. Go figure.

purplechoe
02-16-2010, 08:13 AM
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html?ITO=1490


Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995

By Jonathan Petre
Last updated at 5:12 PM on 14th February 2010

* Data for vital 'hockey stick graph' has gone missing
* There has been no global warming since 1995
* Warming periods have happened before - but NOT due to man-made changes

Data: Professor Phil Jones admitted his record keeping is 'not as good as it should be'

The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.

Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.

The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

The admissions will be seized on by sceptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.

Professor Jones has been in the spotlight since he stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit after the leaking of emails that sceptics claim show scientists were manipulating data.

The raw data, collected from hundreds of weather stations around the world and analysed by his unit, has been used for years to bolster efforts by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to press governments to cut carbon dioxide emissions...

Bruno
02-16-2010, 08:16 AM
"Ooops! I lost all the data that I based my AGW theory on which politicians worldwide are using to scam the world of billions of dollars. But its all true, I really mean it! (just can't seem to find that piece of paper that proves it...gotta be arount here somewhere!)"

Bruno
02-16-2010, 08:27 AM
http://www.accuweather.com/news-story.asp?partner=accuweather&traveler=0&article=2


Following a cold snap in the Northeast, Lake Erie's surface is virtually frozen over for the first time in about 14 years.


The ice ranges in thickness between paper thin along the northern shore and several inches along the southern shore, where many people are ice skating.


GoErie.com reports that the lake hasn't completely frozen since the winter of 1995-1996.


Although the ice cover is considered complete, prevailing winds have created some cracks in the ice.


There are also reportedly ice chunks floating off the coast of Dunkirk, N.Y., which is one of the deepest parts of the lake and would naturally be one of the last places to freeze.


Lake Erie, with an average depth of 62 feet, is the most shallow of the five Great Lakes, which is why it is the only one that completely freezes over.


Since lake-effect snow depends on warmer lake temperatures compared to the air, the frozen lake will deter large amounts of snowfall to the lee of the lake.


The current cold snap will keep the lake mostly, if not completely, frozen for at least the rest of the month.