An inconvenient untruth in Copenhagen gores Big Al's credibility

OK, OK. ... So I said yesterday I was packing it in for Christmas. I just had to unpack for a few minutes to mention this one.

Al Gore claimed in Copenhagen on Monday, December 14, 2009, that according to "fresh" research, he could report that the arctic ice cap could be virtually ice-free in summer months within five to seven years. Problem was, the researcher he was citing happened to be in the neighborhood and kind of said (approximately), "Ummm ... Al, not sure how you got that."

When I heard this I Googled and got:

Results 1 - 10 of about 196,000,000 for in copenhagen al gore claimed polar ice caps melt in seven years

So I guess maybe I'm wasting my time blogging on this one since, with 196 million hits, it's not like I am sharing any secrets here.

Well, in case Google goes bankrupt and closes their portals, here is one post from The Times for you. For further bemusement, you may feel free to Google away the same.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/copenhagen/article6956783.ece

Mr Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years. In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”
However, the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was relying upon dropped the former Vice-President in the water with an icy blast.
“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”
Mr Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.

Thanks to The Times and others for their reports, allowing us home folks to enjoy some of the more warming Copenhagen moments without overly expanding our carbon footprints.

Gratefully submitted,

D.U.

P.S. As I remember Al Gore walking over and smugly standing right in front of George W. Bush during the presidential debate, now I will be watching to see how the climate cartel throws Big Al under the bus as it pulls out of Copenhagen. You can bet it is already done.

AGW: the best place to hear both "sides" is in Fort Collins, Colorado

Greetings global warming survivors wherever you may be.

Again I am posting only a few hours after my last post about the (allegedly) cherry-picked Russian climate data.

What now? I am clearing the decks for Christmas. Shutting it down. But if you are interested in the global warming controversy (more precisely, anthropogenic global warming, or AGW) and if you have a technical bent to sift through fluff versus substance, this is for you.

February 19, 2008, began a written "debate" in the Fort Collins (Colorado) Forum newspaper between Dr. Kevin Trenberth - head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder - and Dr. William Gray, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. It is absolutely amazing to me that the best thorough exchange I have seen on the entire AGW controversy would be scooped by a small town newspaper in northern Colorado.

For your holiday reading, click on the link below and follow the links to read Dr. Gray's initial article, Dr. Trenberth's reply, and one more round of rebuttals:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=4177

And watch with great discernment which argues more from the critical science of cloud physics and which attempts to fly beneath cover of the logical fallacy of "appeal to authority" (as in "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has spoken." ! ! ! ! ! ! ! )

Have a happy Jesus Birthday and a God-blessed 2010.

Submitted with the joy of the season,

D.U.

A Bowl of Unpleasant Cherries for Mr. Obama in Copenhagen

Here it is mid-December and U.S. President Obama will soon be flying back from an Obama-adulating global warming conference in Copenhagen to land in a monster snowstorm in the northeastern US. Ironic, no?

So it is time to talk about picking cherries.


Just for reference, here are a few of Oregon's choice Hood River cherries - sweet and world famous.

But the topic is not picking cherries, but rather "cherry picking", as in selectively choosing what you want and ignoring anything less than the most desirable.

In my memory, the most delightful use of the term "cherry picking" was the Doonesbury cartoon a number of years ago that inferred that U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney was cherry picking Iraq intelligence data like a man selecting lingerie for his wife.

That one has now been far outdone.

Be there any truth in the matter, the Russians are now accusing the global climate cartel member in Britain (recently and famously hacked) of cherry picking Russian climate data. The accusation?

"Meanwhile, a new climate scandal is gaining momentum. The Moscow-based Institute for Economic Analysis (IEA) has accused the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research of the British Meteorology Office of only using statistics from weather stations in Russia that fitted its theory on global warming, and ignoring those that did not."
http://rt.com/Top_News/2009-12-18/data-cherry-picked-climatologists.html?fullstory

Just to keep this in perspective, it is good to remember that RT.com is an English language Russian news port. And a country (Russia) that sends an assassin to Britain to poison someone they don't like with a lethal radioactive cocktail should be held somewhat suspect at times.

But I don't see this one going the way the global warming hysterionicals would like it to go. I know personally that Russia has had excellent and extensive climate data collection systems. Their published records may be checked against the claims the above article makes. But Hadley-CRU has been holding back release of the data used to compute their global warming figures. The November 20, 2009, sensational news of the hacking and release of East Anglia University's Climate Research Unit (CRU) files and emails has forced some partial release of the Hadley-CRU data set. And it looks like that partial release is what has made the Russian IEA analysis possible - just in time to greet U.S. President Obama in Copenhagen.

While the Russian claim remains to be verified, it all tastes like a very delicious bowl of cherries to me, while Mr. Obama may find the aftertaste quite bitter. But then his insensibilty to go on to Copenhagen with the "Climategate" scandal growing by the day may indicate that his taster is not functioning very well. In his frenzy to offer up big chunks of U.S. taxpayer change (yes, "Change you can believe in" ) to support a $100 billion (per year) warming fix, the foul bowl of cherries may not even get his attention. Sensibilities be damned.

A bit more from the RT.com article (in case the link dries up):

"In a report this week, the IEA says the HadCRUT’s study of climate change ignored data from three quarters of the weather stations on the territory of Russia. This includes “more than 40% of the area,” which was not included, not due to missing data, but “for some other reasons.”
That means 40% of Russia’s territory is unrepresented in the world’s most important temperature record.

...

Moreover, of the data available for the same location, the British researchers chose incomplete sets of temperature with growth trends over complete ones that did not fit into the global warming model. Also, data from stations located in cities – which are always likely to be warmer due to waste heat generated by local industries and homes – were preferred over those in remote areas, the IEA says.
All in all, the institute evaluates the difference between the growth of average temperatures between 1870s and 1990s, based on all data available for Russia and those delivered by HadCRUT, as at least 0.64 degrees Celsius.
The report goes on to say that if similar practices, which the IEA bluntly calls “overstating the scale of the warming by HadCRUT”, were used in the selection of raw data from other regions of the world, global estimates for climate change should be seriously amended."

This one is going to fun to watch.

Submitted with a whole bunch of conflicted feelings,

D.U.

P.S. I am not a global warming denier, I am a global warming realist. And I have intimate understanding of the pitfalls of taking meteorological-hydrological-climatological models as infallible dispensers of truth. Like twenty-something gaming addicts for whom cyberspace becomes their real world, climate modelers chained to a computer terminal with the heady hope of saving the planet while modeling 100 years into the future can warp one's view of what is real and what is not. I suspect that many of the climate modeling warm-mongers have not been operational forecasters humbled by the occasional busted forecast. At Copenhagen, their arrogance remains unshattered. But tomorrow?

P.P.S. "But would not some warming increase global food production?" I have been wondering? You can look for the IPCC "admission" mentioned by Nigel Lawson, Energy Secretary in Margaret Thatcher's first government in the early eighties, in the UK Daily Mail opinion piece April 5, 2008, that:

"So far as food production is concerned, it is not clear why a warmer climate would be a problem at all. Even the IPCC concedes that for a warming of anything up to 3 per cent, 'globally, the potential for food production is projected to increase'. Yes: increase."

Read this and more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-557374/The-REAL-inconvenient-truth-Zealotry-global-warming-damage-Earth-far-climate-change.html

The oh-so-pure peer review process can get a little dirty

Yo.

The concept of peer review has worked wonderfully for science and scientists for such a long time now. The basic premise of peer review is to get honest and qualified analysis and recommendation for publication or non-publication of academic papers. And it works very well - when the process is practiced with the intended integrity. But that is not always the case. Not all folks running around in white lab coats have hearts and hands as white as their lab coats.

In earlier posts I mentioned that the peer review process has long been rigged in the discourse over human origins. Lots of good technical material supportive of Biblical creation has been written by highly credentialed scientists but denied publication by the peer review process. Denied not because of poor science but because of viewpoint discrimination. Discrimination seemingly on behalf of of Mr. Charles Darwin but in reality designed to free mankind from the social mores of a Holy God. Discrimination against the Creator - the Creator who not only designed stuff with the greatest of complexities, but managed to fully integrate the whole package with profound robustness.

The nasty and snipy business that peer review can become was so beautifully outed by the global superhero CRU-HACKER. And following is a supporting comment (in the global warming venue but oh so applicable to the science of origins as well):

Dr. John Brignell, a UK Emeritus Engineering Professor at the University of Southampton who held the Chair in Industrial Instrumentation at Southampton, accused the UN of “censorship” on July 23, 2008. “Here was a purely political body posing as a scientific institution. Through the power of patronage it rapidly attracted acolytes. Peer review soon rapidly evolved from the old style refereeing to a much more sinister imposition of The Censorship. As Wegman demonstrated, new circles of like-minded propagandists formed, acting as judge and jury for each other. Above all, they acted in concert to keep out alien and hostile opinion. 'Peer review' developed into a mantra that was picked up by political activists who clearly had no idea of the procedures of science or its learned societies. It became an imprimatur of political acceptability, whose absence was equivalent to placement on the proscribed list,” Brignell wrote.

Excerpted from:
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/3308/Ignorant-Skeptics-UN-Scientist-Prof-Trenberth-says-only-poorly-informed-scientists-disagree-with-UN--Appeals-to-Authority-The-IPCC-has-spoken

Submitted in hopes of enlightenment of the oh-so-enlightened ones.

D.U.

The death of science in our generation

Greetings all.

When the world has just been informed that Rihanna has a new tattoo, why would I be ruminating about such a trivial issue as the death of science?

Well, just 'cuz it's my thing I s'pose.

The EPA announced a finding of earthling endangerment from CO2 and cohort greenhouse gases a couple of days ago. Frankly, the arrogance and scientific bankruptcy of that "finding" just got my goat. And so I woke up this morning thinking about it.

I hope you in your life have had sun-splashed drives to Southern California beaches (or cruising Sunset after the sun goes down) with the radio blaring the 60's We Five song :
(get the ringtone: http://www.lyriczz.com/lyrics/we-five/14814-you-were-on-my-mind/ )

"When I woke up this morning, you were on my mind.
And you were on my mind.
I got troubles, whoa-oh, I got worries, whoa-oh,
I got wounds to bind;
So, I went to the corner, Just to ease my pain.
Said just to ease my pain
I got troubled, whoa-oh, I got worried, whoa-oh,
I came home again,"

So when I woke up this morning, I could not shake the thermageddon craze (global warming hysteria) driving the EPA announcement and stonewalling the opposition of so so many concerned scientists.

So to ease my pain I began to ponder, "What has happened to science?" And why in the world was I feeling compelled to blab away about global warming hysteriorthodoxy on a blog devoted to exposing phony Darwinian and neo-Darwinian evolution? Suddenly, Eureka! Of course!

Science is dying.

And as evolution signals the death throes of science at the hands of amorality, so "Climate-gate" exposes the death-throes of science at the hands of political ideology and expediency.

But to understand death, you must first understand birth. Where and how did modern science develop? To set straight the science-versus-God dogma of historical science revisionists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Nancy Pearcey and Charles Thaxton published The Soul of Science (Crossway Books, 1994), explaining in convincing fashion that the Biblical Christianity was "not a menace but a midwife" to the birthing of modern science. Few understand how the Judaeo-Christian principles of the Bible provided the fertile ground necessary for the development of modern science when and where it appeared historically. Pearcey and Thaxton cover several necessary philosophical underpinnings for development of science in the first chapter of the book. In discussing Christianity and the scientific revolution, they clearly develop the idea that science is "an invented instituition." Modern empirical science did not just arise out of thin air or from a barren philosopical landscape. Here are a few of the connections they offer as examples of how a Biblical view of nature provides specific assumptions about nature that allow and encourage study of the natural world:

(1) nature is a reality => not an “appearance” or “illusion”;
(2) God made it => nature has value => it is worthy of study;
(3) Nature is good, but not a god => de-deification of nature;
(4) Rational Creator God => rational world capable of study;
(5) Belief in an orderly universe => “natural law”;
(6) “God saw that it was good” => precision, not “fuzziness”;
(7) “Man in image of God” => rational man can understand;
(8) Man must look and see (observation required);
(9) Must work “for glory of God and benefit of mankind.”
(10) “God’s ways higher than our ways” => we must seek to understand God’s rationality, do not impose our own;

As I read The Soul of Science about 15 years ago and then reread it only a few years ago, I wondered what the death of science might look like in a post-Christian society such as our own today. And I guess now we see the answer. It is not that Nature and Science cease publication. Not at all, since those and other prestigious journals continue to publish more and more wonderful discoveries weekly. But those journals, as all of our daily meaningful activities, depend on healthy functioning of certain social and economic structures to keep daily life moving along smoothly. It seems clear to me that it is in those necessary supporting structures that the piper must be paid. And the payment will indeed be painful.

First, the decay of social structures due to Darwin and friends:
Darwinian evolution gives mankind a somewhat respectable way to run away from God, even in the light of clear evidence of God's handiwork in the created universe. This opens the way for (not quite!) conscience-free exercise of pride, greed, and lust. The social fruit of a tree with such poisonous roots will not at all look like the bountiful blessing of a pleased Heavenly Father. Daniel Dennett (Darwin's Dangerous Idea) describes Darwinism as a "universal acid" that eats through just about every traditional concept and leaves in its wake a revolutionized world-view. Maybe that is Dennett's delight, but for sure, it's gonna hurt. It already does.

Second, the decay of economic structures.
Due to the exercise of earthly wisdom rather than divine wisdom in government, business, and personal finances, we have likely been tipped. What does that mean? It means going past the point of no return. Just like at some point Bernie Madoff knew that his financial pyramid was lost, he knew the day would come when it would all come down. Except by the merciful intervention of a gracious God, there go we as a nation as well. As I posted several months ago, "we will not get a grip on the dollar until we get a grip on the divine," referring to principles of Deuteronomy Chapter 28, The Holy Bible. The sub-prime bubble exposed a lack of integrity in the business and personal finance sectors (and likely in the government sector as well). And now "Climate-gate" and the EPA endangerment finding reveals our leadership's integrity impoverishment and how it seems destined to add to our growing fiscal impoverishment.

Now I'm done with this post.

I could go on and on and quote and copy all kinds of information about good scientists who are appalled at the cabal of climate "experts" that have fudged data, cornered the market on debate, and refuse in their own vainglorious pride to heed concerns raised by serious and technically sound researchers.

But you don't need me to do that. Just Google "Climate scientists skeptical of climate change", and then maybe go look for U.S. Senator Inhofe's 2008 U.S. Senate Minority Report from Environment and Public Works. The report gives over 650 (and growing) dissenting international scientists disputing anthropogenic (caused by man) climate fears.

And the beat goes on .... while B. H. Obama flies to Copenhagen with his "settled science" decision firmly in his pocket. Isn't that fine?

Listen carefully? Do you hear anything? Pause to feel - is anything shaking? Do you feel the very foundations shaking?

Sadly submitted,

D.U.