Recently in Climate Category

Another thing I have found with the ongoing debate about Anthropogenic Global Warming climate change has been the constant claims by the warmist camp about "consensus" in regards to the findings by tens of thousands ten thousand a thousand 99% of climate scientists that It's-All-The-Fault-Of-The-Evil-Humans. This in itself is enough to discredit their 'proof', as science in no way, shape, or form is about consensus. It means they truly do not understand the scientific method or how proofs are made.

This is something the late author and physician Michael Crichton addressed during a guest lecture at Cal Tech back in 2003.

I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results.

The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus: Period.

Crichton went on to list a number of major failures in regards to "consensus science", some of which caused the loss of many lives. Others destroyed careers, even though later it was discovered that those who went against the consensus were right and everyone else was wrong.

Albert Einstein had his own take on consensus, having once stated "It doesn't matter if ten thousand scientists agree with me. It only takes one to prove me wrong." One of the smartest men in the modern era understood the fallacy of consensus science.

And this is the weakness of the 'theory' of Anthropogenic Global Warming. At the moment it's all consensus and no hard proofs. People, many of them non-scientists, look at some of the presented data and see a correlation between global average temperatures and the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. They come to the conclusion that the increase in carbon dioxide is the cause of the temperature rise. They've fallen into the Correlation Trap. Unfortunately, so have some of the so-called climate scientists, like Al Gore.

As anyone who deals with data and statistics can tell you, correlation does not imply causality. This means just because two factors correlate to each other does not automatically mean that one caused the other. There may be other factors that affect both and cause the correlation but have not been discovered, or have been discounted through ignorance, bias, or conscious decision.

Another possibility the correlation may show but that the warmists have chosen to ignore: CO₂ concentrations have changed because of changing temperatures, something ice core samples from Antarctica have shown to be the case over the past 400,000 years, where CO₂ levels have lagged temperature changes, not led them. But why should they let that data change the narrative? After all the 'consensus' is that it's all our fault, meaning no further discussion is needed or wanted.

Yeah, that will work out well for all of us.

Not.

It seems I just can't get away from AGW this week.

As a follow on to my previous two posts is this piece about the reconstruction of global temperatures over the past 2,000 years. (Well, actually 1,995 years, but who's quibbling?)

This latest reconstruction used a host of proxies from all over the world, but excluded tree-ring proxies - something used by a number of climate researchers, including Mann - because of their unreliability.

...Loehle notes that many long-term reconstructions of climate are based on tree rings, but "There are reasons to believe that tree ring data may not capture long-term climate changes (100+ years) because tree size, root/shoot ratio, genetic adaptation to climate, and forest density can all shift in response to prolonged climate changes, among other reasons." Furthermore, Loehle notes "Most seriously, typical reconstructions assume that tree ring width responds linearly to temperature, but trees can respond in an inverse parabolic manner to temperature, with ring width rising with temperature to some optimal level, and then decreasing with further temperature increases." Other problems include tree responses to precipitation changes, variations in atmospheric pollution levels, diseases, pest outbreaks, and the obvious problem of enrichment that comes along with ever higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Trees are not simple thermometers!

Instead, Loehle used such things as "borehole temperature measurements, pollen remains, Mg/Ca ratios, oxygen isotope data from deep cores or from stalagmites, diatoms deposited on lake bottoms, reconstructed sea surface temperatures, and so on." Loehle's reconstruction used everything except tree-ring data.

His results show both the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods as well as the Little Ice Age, which Mann's did not. Loehle's results also mirrored those of Svensmark, who used Carbon-14 data to determine solar activity over the past 1,000 years. Others have taken that even farther, going back almost 3,500 years. Loehle's global temperature chart mirrored that of the solar activity plotted by Svensmark and others, giving us further clues into another driving force behind climate change.

Could this be another bit of ammunition to use against the Global-Warming-Is-All-The-Fault-Of-The-Evil-Humans theory of climate change? Maybe.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

One of the most bothersome things I've noticed about those supporting AGW as fact is their constant citing of CO₂ data as the only thing we need to concentrate on. They seem to think that 'heat trapping' by atmospheric CO₂ is a linear relationship, meaning as the concentration of CO₂ increase, it's heat trapping increases likewise. But it doesn't. More than a few studies show that after it reaches a critical concentration, further increases have little effect on heat trapping. We're already past that point, meaning the CO₂ effects have reached saturation.

The AGW faithful also ignore such things as solar activity, claiming it's variations to be so small as to be meaningless. But they overlook or ignore other effects variations in solar activity can have that has nothing to do with its radiance. Certainly Svensmark's work implies they are discounting a very big factor that affects Earth's climate. (It certainly seems to affect surface and atmospheric temperatures on Mars, the Jovian and Saturnian moons, and Pluto!)

This topic will continue to generate a lot of commentary. I won't say it will create a lot of debate because you cannot debate with true believers, particularly with those of the AGW faith.

And so it goes.

While not quite as prominent in the media as it has been, the debate about Anthropogenic Global Warming still goes on.

As I posted recently, sixteen concerned scientists wrote and signed a letter stating there is no need to panic about global warming. When I wrote that post I had barely skimmed through the 2700+ comments. Now that I've had a couple of days to look them over, it appears the AGW faithful came out in full force, decrying the sixteen and doing their best to diminish the stature of those scientists. They also kept repeating the same old discredited talking points as if that's all the justification that was needed. Others seemed to pull numbers, 'facts', and statistics out of thin air with no relevant cites to back up their claims about CO₂. Some tried to very hard to discredit any AGW skeptics by claiming they had been bought and paid for by the oil companies, again with no corroborating evidence to back up their claims. Far too many of them had no basic understanding of scientific method and what it meant when data sets of climate data were 'destroyed', making it impossible to check the results of "tens of thousands" of climate researchers. (That was another thing that bugged me as well as some of the commenters - claims by the faithful that "tens of thousands" climate scientists all agreed that AGW was fact. Somehow I doubt that there are that many researchers out there studying this issue. It seems like just another 'fact' pulled out of thin air. A few commenters challenged these claims but no backing evidence or cites were ever produced.)

Calls for drastic actions to 'save the planet' were made again and again, but not one of saying they were needed could give us any details about what we puny humans could possibly do to affect the chaotic system that is called climate to save something that needs no saving, other than to 'decarbonize' our civilization, which usually entails impoverishing the West.

Again we have to ask the question of the faithful: Cui bono?

The case for the "incontrovertible" and "settled Science" of AGW has suffered yet another series of blows. First, it appears there has been no warming over the past 15 years, claims by the warmists notwithstanding. The the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, home of ClimateGate and ClimateGate 2.0, reports that there has been no appreciable warming in that time period.

None of that stops the AGW faithful, who aren't letting things like actual data get in the way of their beliefs.

Then sixteen prominent scientists sign a letter saying there is no need to panic about global warming. The letter pokes holes in some of the claims made by AGW proponents and questions the motivations of those who have abandoned any pretense of scientific objectivity.

Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word "incontrovertible" from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question "cui bono?" Or the modern update, "Follow the money."

Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.

Cui bono? indeed.

As more evidence points to climate change being a natural phenomenon one has to ask this question of the AGW proponents: Who are the 'deniers'? The AGW faithful who pick and chose data that backs their claims while ignoring data that contradicts their beliefs? Or those who look at all the data and find it does not support the claims for AGW?

Call this one a two-fer, covering two different aspects of AGW skepticism.

First, comes a peer reviewed article in Science that covers a study questioning the sensitivity of Earth's climate to CO₂ concentrations.

In particular, the study suggests that the probable sensitivity of the earth's climate to increases in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is far lower than the assumptions traditionally used by the (already discredited) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Not only that, the authors find that the existence of a so-called "fat tail" -- the notion that extreme temperature changes in response to increases in atmospheric CO2 are likely -- is illusory.

If this is indeed the case, then many of the defective climate models being used to predict climate catastrophe just became even more defective, and therefore, even less predictive of what future climate might be like.

Then, comes a follow up on the discrediting of the Mann 'hockey stick' graph.

You may be asking yourself "Why is he covering this again?" It's simple, really: far too many true believers still cite the Mann graph as incontrovertible proof of AGW.

I've had more debates with a number of them bringing up the graph as if it were holy writ despite the fact that once Mann allowed both his data sets and the algorithms used to analyze the data to be evaluated, both were found to be so profoundly flawed that the results were meaningless. When random data was used with the algorithms, the hockey stick was still there (though to a different amplitude), meaning the graph was built into the formula. That's not science. That's fraud. (Or possibly it's incompetence, but I'm learning more towards the former than the latter.)

The text of the ClimateGate 2.0 e-mails quoted in the linked post question the validity of Mann's work, with some lamenting their decisions not to question his work. One in particular tested Mann's algorithms, finding them wanting.

4241.txt: Rob Wilson again: " The whole Macintyre issue got me thinking...I first generated 1000 random time-series in Excel ... The reconstructions clearly show a 'hockey-stick' trend. I guess this is precisely the phenomenon that Macintyre has been going on about. "

4369.txt: Tim Osborn says " This completely removes most of Mike's arguments... "  and Ed Cook replies "I am afraid that Mike is defending something that  increasingly can not be defended. He is investing too much personal stuff in this and not letting the science move ahead."

When colleagues of Mann's are questioning the validity of his work and his emotional investment in his results, then we must question whether they are the results of science or just wishing it were true. In this case it is the second rather than the first.

And so dies the "incontrovertible proof".

I could write volumes about the continuing ClimateGate scandal, but more than a few people have beaten me to it. One of them is James Delingpole in a WSJ opinion piece. But as good as his piece is, it is in the comments we find a few gems. Probably one of the better ones was penned by Michael Rivero as he reduces it to a few salient points as well as illustrating the actual motivation behind so many of those who want to push us back to a hunter-gatherer existence. Here is his comment in its entirety with a few formatting edits to make it easier to read (WSJ doesn't allow HTML tags in comments):

For more than ten years we have watched for "Carbonazis" try to do to Earth with CO₂ when ENRON did to California with electricity; make themselves very rich with lies and deceptions about a non-existent crisis. Along the way we have seen data manipulation, siting of temperature sensors near sources of heat (in one notorious case right next to a trash incinerator), collusion with the corporate media to keep opposing data from the public, even as the former head of Greenpeace admits making up claims about Greenland losing its ice cover, Phil Jones admits warming stopped 15 years ago (which anyone living through the last four hard winters already knew) and Al Gore insisting that the temperature of the Earth's core is "millions of degrees" while he uses computer generated images of collapsing arctic ice for his "documentary" (which has already been denounced by the British courts for containing numerous lies and misrepresentations.)

The global warming cult is not interested in saving the Earth, and shamelessly exploits the public's desire to save the Earth to enrich and empower themselves, living like royalty as they tell the rest of the people they must live more poorly.

"We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public's imagination... So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts... Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest." - Prof. Stephen Schneider, Stanford Professor of Climatology, lead author of many IPCC reports

"We've got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy." - Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation

"No matter if the science of global warming is all phony... climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world." - Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment

"I believe it is appropriate to have an 'over-representation' of the facts on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience." - Al Gore, Climate Change activist

"It doesn't matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true." - Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace

"We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis..." - David Rockefeller, Club of Rome executive member

"The goal now is a socialist, redistributionist society, which is nature's proper steward and society's only hope." - David Brower, founder of Friends of the Earth

"If we don't overthrow capitalism, we don't have a chance of saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have an ecologically sound society under socialism. I don't think it is possible under capitalism" - Judi Bari, principal organiser of Earth First!

"Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsiblity to bring that about?" - Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme

"A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation." - Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies

"Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs." - John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal

"Humans on the Earth behave in some ways like a pathogenic micro-organism, or like the cells of a tumor." - Sir James Lovelock, Healing Gaia

"The Earth has cancer and the cancer is Man." - Club of Rome, Mankind at the Turning Point

I don't think we need any more proof of the Left's intentions in regards to AGW, do we?

I think it's time to buckle down and get back to some of the allegedly more important doings around the world. In this case we'll delve back into the It's-All-The-Fault-Of-The-Evil-Humans Anthropogenic Global Warming shtick.

I have to admit that I was goaded back to this subject by the WP Brother-In-Law as we discussed the matter post-Thanksgiving dinner. He had moderated his viewpoint quite a bit, particularly in light of the original ClimateGate scandal and further investigation on his own. While he no longer automatically assumes any climate change is automatically our fault, he's still on the fence about what to do about it.

With ClimateGate 2.0 making the rounds, as well as more data showing the climate models being used to predict future global climate seriously underestimate the effects of some factors while overestimating others, making the models useless (most are so defective they can't even predict past climate, meaning using data sets that encompass several decades of weather data up in to the 60's and 70's they weren't able to 'predict' the climate we actually experienced in the 80's and 90's), the debate is heating up again.

I won't delve deep into the controversy as I have expressed my opinion about the "settled science" more than once - that there is no such thing. New data, new observations, disproved theorums, and new hypotheses can unsettle the settled science at any time.

One of the latest blows against the warmist claims is this report that CO₂ may not warm the planet nearly as much as everyone thought.

The climate may be less sensitive to carbon dioxide than we thought - and temperature rises this century could be smaller than expected. That's the surprise result of a new analysis of the last ice age. However, the finding comes from considering just one climate model, and unless it can be replicated using other models, researchers are dubious that it is genuine.

I find the last sentence to be hypocritical. How many of the claims made by the IPCC, UEA, and a host of other climate researchers are any more valid than the one from this analysis? Many of the critics of this report used cooked data, algorithms which give the same answers regardless of the data fed into them, and outright fraud to 'prove' their theories. Isn't that the pot calling the kettle black?

Another instance of hypocrisy: data from NASA satellites show the radiation of heat from the Earth into space is higher than many of the warmists believed. You would think that information would have some effect on their predictions, but all we've heard from them has been a muted "It doesn't make a bit of difference" and then silence. New data and observations in contradiction of 'settled' science are supposed to lead to further investigation and modifications to or scrapping of theories that are not supported by that data. Instead, it is ignored in order to preserve the theories so many have staked their reputations (and funding) upon. That is not how science is supposed to work.

And so it goes.

I find it interesting that the AGW faithful aren't using new data to conclude climate change is All-The-Fault-Of-The-Evil-Humans. Much of the same kind of data they're using to 'prove' global warming is due solely to human activity was used back in 1973 to prove the same thing about global cooling, proposing many of the same 'solutions' to fix the problem.

In 1973 I attended an Ecology Symposium at Ohio State University meant for faculty and graduate students in the auditorium of the engineering school. I was an undergrad, but I sneaked in among the several hundred attendees, an got a seat in the back of the auditorium before the doors were shut. I heard several presentations and lectures by a distinguished panel of professors and researchers from other universities speaking on the approaching perilous demise of planet earth by global cooling. The earth was literally beginning to freeze because mankind was using too much fossil fuels so that the pollution was blocking the suns rays and its warmth.

The consensus of the distinguished panel was that our end was certain by 1980, or 1985 at the latest. The northern polar ice cap was going to expand rapidly, devouring first Canada, then the upper half of the United States. Canadians were going to flood the U.S. and they, and Americans would then flee south to Mexico and Central America triggering a bloody war as those Latinos would have to fight off the invasion. In the midst of this bloody war, America's bread basket would be gone as our fertile land could no longer feed the rest of the world as it would be under ice. The end result would be the loss of at least 75% of the planet's human population.

The solution offered by this august group of distinguished experts: Americans, and only Americans, would have to surrender their cars, single family homes, all of their electric gadgets, and their individual liberties to a strong central government which would hire these, and like-minded experts who would forever manage our society. The rest of the world could be permitted to press on as they were because they were not guilty of our over-consumption of the world's resources.

I also have copy of the Jan 13, 1972 issue of the Columbus Dispatch with lead editorial on the demise of mankind from over-population. It recommended the implementation of the President's Commission on Over-population. . . . president Nixon's commission. According to this AP editorial, we had mere months to get moving on this matter or face extinction. The solution: Americans had to surrender. . . . etc.

You get the point.

Funny how regardless of whatever crisis conjured up by our ruling elites the solution is the same.

I've noticed that, too. Just about any crisis, even a faux crisis, will be used as an excuse to expand the power of our self-defined and self-delusional ruling elite. After all, they know much better how to run our lives than we do. And because they do, they will be exempt from the restrictions placed upon the rest of us because of the 'burdens' they bear on our behalf.

Yeah. Right.

Unlike so many others, I am not going to dwell long on the impending doom that is Hurricane Irene. All day yesterday we saw people getting ready for the coming deluge, stocking up on all kinds of supplies, from bottled water to cans of Dinty Moore Stew to toilet paper and paper towels. At more than one gas station I saw people filling up multiple gas cans (I must assume for their generators) while I made sure we had gas for the chainsaw (far more important, I believe).

One thing that stood out above all the others: folks pulling their boats out of the water all around Lake Winnipesaukee. The boat ramps and marinas were plenty busy getting them out of the water. I saw quite a few 'lines of water' on the roads surrounding the lake. (These lines are usually water draining from the bilges of boats as they're towed down the road by their owners, assuming they remembered to remove their bilge plugs.) At least that's one thing I didn't have to do as The Boat never made it into the water this year. (The renovations are proceeding and I expect it will be in tip-top shape for next year.)

BeezleBub is helping Farmer Andy get his farm ready for the deluge and winds. Somehow I doubt he'll have to show up for work tomorrow as the farm stand won't likely be open and there's no real place for him to work on the farm machinery where he won't get drenched.

Now I'm going to put aside the keyboard and get back to cleaning up the mess from yesterday's debacle. (See my previous "Head For The Hills!" post.)

After reading this, I think we should pray there is some anthropogenic global warming coming our way, otherwise it might get a bit chilly here on Earth...and the other planets as well.

If the solar scientists are right, we might be seeing decades of much lower solar activity after the peak of this rather anemic sunspot cycle.

Scientists have studied sunspots and the sun's 11-year activity cycle for 400 years, and they're getting increasingly savvy about spotting the harbingers of "space weather" years in advance, just as meteorologists can figure out what's coming after the next storm.

Storms from the sun are expected to build to a peak in 2013 or so, but after that, the long-range indicators are pointing to an extended period of low activity -- or even hibernation.

The previous two periods of low solar activity, the Maunder and Dalton Minimums, led us the what is called the Little Ice Age. It wasn't until the early 1800's that solar activity picked up again and ended the Little Ice Age. These types of solar minimums have created havoc worldwide and one such minimum that ended the Medieval Warm Period may have helped usher in the Black Plague in Europe which wiped out from one-third to one-half of the population. Agriculture suffered and previously habitable lands became too cold to grow crops or raise livestock, like Greenland or Newfoundland. (Yes, Greenland was once green. The Vikings had settled, farmed, and thrived there for over 400 years before the Little Ice Age made it impossible for them to survive there.)

Somehow the AGW folks have convinced themselves we'd be better off with a colder world despite having not one shred of evidence to support their beliefs and plenty of evidence to the contrary. They can choose to ignore the possibility that a warmer world would be better, with the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods giving us a good indication of that.

The peak of present sunspot cycle - Cycle 24 - is expected in 2013, and it's expected to be a particularly weak one. But wait, there's more!

All these signs suggest that the current solar cycle, Cycle 24, "may be the last one for quite some time," Hill said. The next upswing in solar storms, Cycle 25, may be "very much delayed ... very weak, or may not happen at all."

The solar activity upswing at the start of Cycle 24 was almost 2 years late, and what activity we have seen is far below that seen in Cycles 23, 22, and 21, with Cycle 23 having been one of the most energetic in centuries. Is it a coincidence that Earth's climate warmed during that period? Is it a coincidence that the climate on Mars, and Jupiter's and Saturn's moons also warmed during that same period?

Not likely.

The long overdue upswing in the 11-year sunspot cycle has started, though many believe the solar maximum this cycle (Cycle 24) will be half that of Cycle 23.

Some of the AGW faithful are claiming this upswing disproves the link between sunspots and climate cycles, but if the lengthy solar minimum (when sunspots are at their minimum number) had the effect many solar astronomers and atmospheric physicists believe it did, then the future solar maximum (when sunspots are at their maximum number) should have less affect on Earth's climate (and that of Mars, the Jovian moons, and so on) than the previous solar maximum.

But I have a different reason than many others out there to be glad the number of sunspots on the sun's surface are increasing, that being radio propagation.

When the sun is quiet, as happens at the bottom of the aforementioned 11-year sunspot cycle, shortwave radio propagation on a number of radio bands won't be nearly as good as it is at the top of a cycle. Being an amateur radio operator since the 1970's, I have always looked forward to the peak of the sunspot cycles knowing the lower frequency amateur radio bands would experience good long range propagation, meaning more of the bands could be used to communicate across the globe.

Who cares if it affects the global climate? I want to see the 12 and 10-meter amateur radio bands open up so I can work some of those rare overseas stations reachable only during the peaks of the sunspot cycles.

Bring it on!

It appears the claims about how global warming is causing the heavier snows is being disputed from a number of disparate groups, including, of all things, the IPCC, Al Gore's claims to the contrary.

Every bit of weather that we have experienced lately - above normal, below normal, or absolutely normal - has been blamed on global warming and global warming has been blamed on human activity. They, meaning those making such claims, are wrong.

Last week a severe storm froze Dallas under a sheet of ice, just in time to disrupt the plans of the tens of thousands of (American) football fans descending on the city for the Super Bowl. On the other side of the globe, Cyclone Yasi slammed northeastern Australia, destroying homes and crops and displacing hundreds of thousands of people.

Some climate alarmists would have us believe that these storms are yet another baleful consequence of man-made CO2 emissions. In addition to the latest weather events, they also point to recent cyclones in Burma, last winter's fatal chills in Nepal and Bangladesh, December's blizzards in Britain, and every other drought, typhoon and unseasonable heat wave around the world.

But is it true? To answer that question, you need to understand whether recent weather trends are extreme by historical standards. The Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project is the latest attempt to find out, using super-computers to generate a dataset of global atmospheric circulation from 1871 to the present.

As it happens, the project's initial findings, published last month, show no evidence of an intensifying weather trend. "In the climate models, the extremes get more extreme as we move into a doubled CO2 world in 100 years," atmospheric scientist Gilbert Compo, one of the researchers on the project, tells me from his office at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "So we were surprised that none of the three major indices of climate variability that we used show a trend of increased circulation going back to 1871."

So the warmists say one thing, but historical records say something entirely different. Which one do we believe? To quote the late great Groucho Marx, "Who are you going to believe? Me? Or your lying eyes?"

It's like the media hype we have to deal with every time we get a snowstorm. They build it up to be a killer storm that will cripple everything and everyone for days or weeks, making it seem we'll all be re-enacting the conditions and outcome of the Donner party, eating our frozen dead to survive. But in the end we all survive quite nicely and the snowstorm ends up inconveniencing us for a day or two. And so it is the the AGW hysteria.

If we need even more evidence of Global Warming all we have to do is look to Australia. Remember, it's now summer Down Under - it's that pesky Southern Hemisphere thing - and southeastern Australia (New South Wales and Victoria) has been suffering unseasonably cold temperatures. Some areas have received over 8 inches of snow.

Snow. In summer. (Well, actually it was late spring, but still....)

That's like San Diego getting hammered with a snowstorm in late June.

So, do you want to tell me about Glo-bull Warmening again?

Yeah, it must be Global Warming. That's why the UK and much of northern Europe are being hammered by snowstorms and below normal temperatures.

It's not just the UK freezing this month. Large portions of the US, including a number of states in the South, have been experiencing well below normal temperatures. There have been times over the past few days when it's been colder in Florida than here in northern New England. That does not bode well for the coming winter.

Predictions by NOAA stated that much of the nation would experience a normal or warmer than normal winter. But it appears atmospheric dynamics didn't bother listening to the Weather Guys^TM, at least when it comes to Eastern US, giving us some bitterly cold temps. Florida has suffered freezing temps, threatening crops. Fountains in Atlanta froze solid. And here in norther New England we've been experiencing some below normal temps. (It was 9ºF here at The Manse at 6PM today.) Some of the bays and coves around Lake Winnipesaukee are already frozen over and some have been ice covered for a couple of weeks, well ahead of the usual time.

I'm wondering (yet again) whether we will see sub-zero temperatures on Christmas Day, something that is known to happen around here from time to time.

The UK is still digging out from the snowfall in Scotland and East Anglia as temperatures stay well below freezing throughout the UK. To this point it's been the coldest December in 100 years and Great Britain is suffering from cold temps it is poorly equipped to handle.

Not that it's been all that warm here in New England either, but at least we're used to such weather. The cold temps arrived earlier than expected, with a number of towns in northern New Hampshire reporting overnight lows well below zero (Fahrenheit). It reached about 5ºF here at The Manse early this morning, meaning it was a bit chilly heading out to work. (I seem to recall we've seen more than one Christmas morning over the past 30 years where the day time temps never rose above zero. It wouldn't surprise me if it were to happen this year.)

So does anyone want to tell me about Global Warming again?

Anyone still trying to sell Anthropogenic Global Warming might want to avoid the UK. Considering the Brits have been experiencing below normal temperatures for the second winter in a row and considerable snowfall this year, it would be a tough sell. Authorities figure close to 28,000 Brits died over a period of four months due to the extremely cold weather last winter and they fear the death toll will be higher this winter.

Where's global warming when you really need it?

You know the winds have shifted when Al Gore says the ethanol industry serves no useful purpose.

What? The sainted AlGore is against all these government subsidies for ethanol because it's a fraud?

I'm beginning to wonder if I'm stuck in an episode of Fringe.

Said AlGore:

"It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first-generation ethanol," Al Gore told a gathering of clean energy financiers in Greece this week. The benefits of ethanol are "trivial," he added, but "It's hard once such a program is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going."

That's true of any government subsidy. All anyone has to do is look at farm subsidies in general, a practice that has been going on for generations. All such subsidies do is waste tax dollars propping up some operation or industry that will no longer feel the need to change or innovate to the point where it no longer needs subsidies.

All of that aside, one must wonder if Al Gore has realized the error of his ways, or is he positioning himself to make another few hundred million dollars with government subsidies for yet another alternative energy scheme?

Only time will tell.

A particularly fine smack down of the supposed climate warming agenda, a massive gubmit-sponsored project, by Dr. Tim Ball, professor emeritus of the University of Winnipeg, hosted by Lew Rockwell. It's a 26-minute podcast that I found riveting.

After a warm summer, I've found fall temps to be bone-chillingly cold.

Watching the national news (specifically ABC News), one would think we're in the midst of a string of record breaking summers, with hot and humid temperatures across most of the US. They've attributed it to global warming all while ignoring a number of cyclical weather patterns (El Niño and La Niña) that are far more likely to be the cause of this summer's weather. We here in New England have managed to avoid much of what the rest of the nation has been dealing with (it's been warm but with mostly low humidity), but that doesn't mean we haven't noticed what's been going on. We've seen the reports from all over the nation about the never ending heat waves. But we've also been hearing about the Southern Hemisphere, which has been dealing with record cold temperatures.

This summer's weather has caused a bit of amnesia about the previous two summers, where the weather was mostly cooler and wetter than normal. During those summers, here in the northeast we didn't really experience summer weather until August. June and July were cold and very wet, seriously affecting the farm industry and the tourist trade. On the farms, crops ran late and some were drowned out altogether. And who wants to go to the beach or go hiking or boating or hit the tourist spots when it's in the 60's, cloudy, and damp?

If we have a string of summers like the one we've been experiencing this year, then we might be able to attribute it to global warming. But if it's just this summer, and the following summers are 'normal' then wouldn't we have to say it was just weather and not climate? If you're like most folks, I'd say the answer would be yes. But knowing the It's-All-The-Fault-Of-The-Evil-Humans global warming folks they will ignore the normal summer pattern and focus intently on this summer as proof of AGW. Never mind there's been a decade long cooling trend.

And then of course, there's this. But let's not let facts get in the way of our opinions, right?