US lists polar bear as threatened species

[GaryC 7]

Not a study but an example of how your side looks to most of us now. You need to rethink your ideas before you lose all credibility.

Watch the web for climate change truths

By Christopher Booker

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 04/05/2008

A notable story of recent months should have been the evidence pouring in from all sides to cast doubts on the idea that the world is inexorably heating up. The proponents of man-made global warming have become so rattled by how the forecasts of their computer models are being contradicted by the data that some are rushing to modify the thesis.

Last September's data, showed ice cover had shrunk over six months to just 3 million but by March the ice had recovered to 14 million sq km

So a German study, published by Nature last week, claimed that, while the world is definitely warming, it may cool down until 2015 "while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions".

A little vignette of the media's one-sided view was given by recent events on Snowdon, the highest mountain in southern Britain. Each year between 2003 and 2007, the retreat of its winter snow cover inspired reports citing this as evidence of global warming.

In 2004 scientists from the University of Bangor made headlines with the prediction that Snowdon might lose its snowcap altogether by 2020. In 2007 a Welsh MP, Lembit Opik, was saying "it is shocking to think that in just 14 years snow on this mountain could be nothing but a distant memory".

Last November, viewing photographs of a snowless Snowdon at an exhibition in Cardiff, the Welsh environment minister, Jane Davidson, said "we must act now to reduce the greenhouse gases that cause climate change".

advertisementYet virtually no coverage has been given to the abnormally deep spring snow which prevented the completion of a new building on Snowdon's summit for more than a month, and nearly made it miss the deadline for £4.2 million of EU funding. (Brussels eventually extended the deadline to next autumn.)

Two weeks ago, as North America emerged from its coldest and snowiest winter for decades, the US National Climate Data Center, run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued a statement that snow cover in January on the Eurasian land mass had been the most extensive ever recorded, and that in the US March had been only the 63rd warmest since records began in 1895.

While global warming enthusiasts might take cheer from the NOAA's claim that "average global land temperature" in March was "the warmest on record", this was in striking contrast to a graph published last week on the Climate Audit website by Steve McIntyre.

Tracking satellite data for the tropical troposphere, it showed March temperatures plunging to one of their lowest points in 30 years.

Mr McIntyre is the computer expert who exposed the infamous "hockey stick" graph - that icon of warmist orthodoxy which showed global temperatures soaring recently to their highest level for 1,000 years. He showed that the computer model that produced this graph had been so designed that it would have conjured even random numbers from a telephone directory into the shape of a hockey stick).

On April 24 the World Wildife Fund (WWF), another body keen to keep the warmist flag flying, published a study warning that Arctic sea ice was melting so fast that it may soon reach a "tipping point" where "irreversible change" takes place. This was based on last September's data, showing ice cover having shrunk over six months from 13 million square kilometres to just 3 million.

What the WWF omitted to mention was that by March the ice had recovered to 14 million sq km (see the website Cryosphere Today), and that ice-cover around the Bering Strait and Alaska that month was at its highest level ever recorded. (At the same time Antarctic sea ice-cover was also at its highest-ever level, 30 per cent above normal).

The most dramatic evidence, however, emerged last week with an announcement by Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory that an immense slow-cycling movement of water in the Pacific, known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), had unexpectedly shifted into its cool phase, something which only happens every 30 years or so, ultimately affecting climate all over the globe.

Discussion of this on the invaluable Watts Up With That website, run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts, shows how the alternations of the PDO between warm and cool coincided with each of the major temperature shifts of the 20th century - warming after 1905, cooling after 1946, warming again after 1977 - and how the new shift to a cool phase could have repercussions for decades to come.

It is notable that the German computer predictions published last week by Nature forecast a decade of cooling due to deep-ocean movements in the Atlantic, without taking account of how this may now be reinforced by a similar, even greater movement in the Pacific.

Mr Watts points out that the West coast of the USA might already be experiencing these effects in the recent freezing temperatures that have devastated orchards and vineyards in California, prompting an appeal for disaster relief for growers who fear they may have lost this year's crops.

Mr Watts's readers are amused by the explanation from one warmist apologist that "these natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities - or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it".

It is striking, in view of the colossal implications of the current response to "the greatest challenge confronting mankind" - as our politicians love to call it - how this hugely important debate is almost entirely overlooked by the media, and is instead conducted largely on the internet, through expert websites such as those run by Mr McIntyre and Mr Watts.

On one hand our politicians are committing us to spending unimaginable sums on wind farms, emissions trading schemes, absurdly ambitious biofuel targets, and every kind of tax and regulation designed to reduce our "carbon footprint" - all based on blindly accepting the predictions of computer models that the planet is overheating due to our output of greenhouse gases.

On the other hand, a growing number of scientists are producing ever more evidence to show how those computer models are based on wholly inadequate data and assumptions - as is being confirmed by the behaviour of nature itself (not least the continuing non-arrival of sunspot cycle 24).

The fact is that what has been happening to the world's climate in recent years, since global temperatures ceased to rise after 1998, was not predicted by any of those officially-sponsored models. The discrepancy between their predictions and observable data becomes more glaring with every month that passes.

It won't do for believers in warmist orthodoxy to claim that, although temperatures may be falling, this is only because they are "masking an underlying warming trend that is still continuing" - nor to fob us off with assurances that the "German model shows that higher temperatures than 1998, the warmest year on record, are likely to return after 2015".

In view of what is now at stake, such quasi-religious incantations masquerading as science are something we can no longer afford. We should get back to proper science before it is too late.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jh...5/04/do0405.xml

Edited May 17, 2008 by GaryC

[HAL 9000 96]

Jesus Christ Gary... you're reaaaally reaching aren't you?

For once try, just try logic before believing reports of reports of reports... go directly to the source... that is your best bet to understand the material...

Also may I suggest understanding the difference between high-resolution (short time scale) weather occurence and low-resolution (large time scale) climate patterns.

But since you are fixated on the statistical outliers, you may be surprised to know that beyond the particular weather patterns you claim are negative of climactic shifts, think that global homeostasis is real and that where cold is colder, heat will be hotter elsewhere. Again... that simple thermodynamics for you.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Hell, even Dubbya and McCain both have accepted Global Warming. Gary seems to one the very few Americans that defy logic by ignoring the overwhelming majority of expert scientific opinion on the matter. It's comical and pathetic.

[HAL 9000 96]

Hell, even Dubbya and McCain both have accepted Global Warming. Gary seems to one the very few Americans that defy logic by ignoring the overwhelming majority of expert scientific opinion on the matter. It's comical and pathetic.

So... even bubbly wubbly is in agreement with us "inflexible, closed-minded" GW alarmists... hehehehehe. Geeeeez...

Anyway... Steven... Gary... everyone else... have a great weekend guys!

[GaryC 7]

The reason that Dubbia and McCain have signed onto this nonsense is the same reason that we have to deal with this hoax in the first place, public opinion. And ironicly public opinion will be the death of GW. Let me explain. In the 70's all you heard about was a coming ice age. We saw artist conceptions of New York buried under ice. And guess what? They blamed humans for it! They were saying that the soot produced in power plants was blocking out the sun. The media, seeing a good story, hyped it for all it was worth. Everyone was worried about the ice age and was blaming mankind for it. To bad the planet had other ideas though. Soon the temps started going up. So science had to find a new disaster to hype. So they looked around and missapplied the idea of the green house effect of CO2. Presto! They had a new dooms day to run with. The media, seeing another good story ran with that one. About that same time the russians landed a probe on Venus and found a run away green house effect going on. Wow, that conjured up visions of the earth boiling away. So for the next 20 years we were inundated with story after story of how we were all doomed. And the public, not knowing any better, looked at their thermometers and saw it was indeed getting warmer. So, public opinion started to demand that something be done before we all roast to death. The politicians, seeing the chance to grab some more power and to satisfy the demand for action, jumped right in. So any politician that wants to be seen as "earth friendly" started touting the fear of GW and how we are destroying the planet. Then in 1998 we had a really hot year. Confusing weather with climate ALGORE and his cronies said this was proof of GW. We had to do something!!! Nobody noticed that it stopped getting warmer, the hype just went on. In 2005 we had a bad hurricane. More cries of "see!!! I told you!!" came. Still nobody noticed that it wasn't getting any warmer. Then last year someone noticed. In fact we were told that last year the temp dropped so much that it wiped out all the gains in temp made over the last 100 years. No matter, we were told it was just a temporary thing, GW would be back. But then the scientists started looking at their data again. "Oh no!!!" "It looks like our models were wrong!!" "It will not get warmer next year." "What to do???" "I know, lets make up some bogus story about ocean thermal sinks and say in 10 years GW will be back." "Maybe the public will buy that." "We sure can't tell them that the very basis of our hysteria was wrong." I know that for a few years the public will buy this load of #######. But as year after year goes by and they see it isn't getting warmer the public opinion will shift. And when the pandering politicians try to pass regulations that cost us big money the people will say "Oh no you don't!" "It stopped getting warmer." After the 10 years passes with no further warming the public will go "Hmmmm..... I think we were duped." So the very thing that caused the hysteria will be the same thing that kills it, public opinion.

Edited May 17, 2008 by GaryC

[HAL 9000 96]

OKifthatswhatyouthinkthenIguessitsfinebymetoo.

Take a chill pill and do more research papers... but also relax and have a good weekend

[cmartyn 0]

That's not even the argument and I hope you know it. sheesh. Think man think.

I was editorializing, not arguing. In any case, this has become a GW thread. I was hoping it would stick to bears and other fuzzy things, like Glen Becks sense of reality. I see this week he wants to arm America and reinvent the constitution.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Hell, even Dubbya and McCain both have accepted Global Warming. Gary seems to one the very few Americans that defy logic by ignoring the overwhelming majority of expert scientific opinion on the matter. It's comical and pathetic.

So science is a popularity contest?

RESISTANCE IS FUTILE

[Ban Hammer 13,655]

So science is a popularity contest?

RESISTANCE IS FUTILE

pretty much.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Hell, even Dubbya and McCain both have accepted Global Warming. Gary seems to one the very few Americans that defy logic by ignoring the overwhelming majority of expert scientific opinion on the matter. It's comical and pathetic.

So science is a popularity contest?

RESISTANCE IS FUTILE

It took awhile for everyone to accept the world wasn't flat either, but the popular acceptance of Global Warming is being led by an impressive number of experts in science who actually know what they're talking about. That's what got us to the moon, led to the discovery of many cures, digital television. Science is amazing, isn't it?

[Heracles 417]

It took awhile for everyone to accept the world wasn't flat either, but the popular acceptance of Global Warming is being led by an impressive number of experts in science who actually know what they're talking about. That's what got us to the moon, led to the discovery of many cures, digital television. Science is amazing, isn't it?

Science is also about weighing the evidence and looking at both sides. Yet when it comes to global warming there is only one opinion aloud.

Edited May 17, 2008 by Boo-Yah!

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

It took awhile for everyone to accept the world wasn't flat either, but the popular acceptance of Global Warming is being led by an impressive number of experts in science who actually know what they're talking about. That's what got us to the moon, led to the discovery of many cures, digital television. Science is amazing, isn't it?

Science is also about weighing the evidence and looking at both sides. Yet when it comes to global warming there is only one opinion aloud.

People already by into the idea that there are only 2 sides to the political spectrum, and that news coverage can be made "fair" simply by airing two diametrically opposed points of view.

Scientific investigation doesn't really work on the assumption that there are only two possibilities.

Edited May 17, 2008 by Number 6

[HAL 9000 96]

That's not even the argument and I hope you know it. sheesh. Think man think.

I was editorializing, not arguing. In any case, this has become a GW thread. I was hoping it would stick to bears and other fuzzy things, like Glen Becks sense of reality. I see this week he wants to arm America and reinvent the constitution.

Maybe next week he can arm the polar bears and have them drive themselves to extinction...

[HAL 9000 96]

It took awhile for everyone to accept the world wasn't flat either, but the popular acceptance of Global Warming is being led by an impressive number of experts in science who actually know what they're talking about. That's what got us to the moon, led to the discovery of many cures, digital television. Science is amazing, isn't it?

Science is also about weighing the evidence and looking at both sides. Yet when it comes to global warming there is only one opinion aloud.

People already by into the idea that there are only 2 sides to the political spectrum, and that news coverage can be made "fair" simply by airing two diametrically opposed points of view.

Scientific investigation doesn't really work on the assumption that there are only two possibilities.

Bingo. What is more prevalent... not necessarily the best methodology... but it works better than anything tried previously is called hypothesis-driven research. Some get disproven, and its not always a bad thing.

Doing "science" by concluding and/or argumenting before actually doing any discovery is called "fishing."

Better Funding accompanies hypothesis-driven research.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Hell, even Dubbya and McCain both have accepted Global Warming. Gary seems to one the very few Americans that defy logic by ignoring the overwhelming majority of expert scientific opinion on the matter. It's comical and pathetic.

So science is a popularity contest?

RESISTANCE IS FUTILE

It took awhile for everyone to accept the world wasn't flat either, but the popular acceptance of Global Warming is being led by an impressive number of experts in science who actually know what they're talking about. That's what got us to the moon, led to the discovery of many cures, digital television. Science is amazing, isn't it?

A hundred years ago scientists would have said blacks were inferior. What changed?