Climategate Update 20: Snowing Around The World, But Warming In Antarctica?

It's snowing down under. Well, it is December so nothing unusual about that . . . except that its actually Australia's summertime.

In Europe - its snow everywhere. This from EU Referendum:

"This is wild stuff ... this is astounding looking. This is something that I don't recall seeing where fully 80 percent of the Continent is covered by snow ... this is getting started earlier than I thought. Europe's in for a very cold period."

Joe Bastardi on the weather forecast for Europe.

Ontario just had one of the worst snow storms they have ever recorded. Across the U.S., this past week saw a significant number of new records set for cold and snow. And there are many more such reports from around the world - not to mention locally where we saw the earliest snow fall in my memory about my humble abode. But all of that is mere anecdotal evidence.

There is far more evidence to suggest warming should not be our major concern. There is, for instance, this from EU Referendum:

The official record - interpreted by Dr Lucia Liljegren, an atmospheric researcher with the Ames Laboratory at Iowa State University, current temperature levels are even now below the "best-case scenario" postulated by the IPCC (see graph below - the lower of the lines).



According to Peter Taylor, in his new book "Chill", this is just the start. He maintains the world is cooling. Magnetic activity of the sun – which many to believe to be the real driver of the climate – is at an all-time low. There is a possibility of a repeat of the Maunder Minimum of the 17th century when the Thames froze every winter and famine spread through Europe and China.

Even with the benefit of the recent warming period – and higher recorded CO2 levels which improve plant productivity – the world is already on the brink although the pessimistic forecasts earlier this year did not transpire. Stock levels have sharply rebounded from the 2007-08 record low and are forecast to climb even higher by the end of 2009-10 to stand at around 160 million tons. . . .

Perhaps the most fundamental issue in "climate science" is the inaccuracy - or maleability - of data on surface temperatures. With the thermometer only a few centuries old, accurate surface data readings from various spots on the globe have been spotty over time, and quite often, our AGW scientists will use a single locations reading to extrapolate surface temperatures for a vast area. Sometimes that is warranted, other times it amounts to deliberate fraud, such as in the recent case discussed at Watts Up With That, where "Steig, et. al. published their recent finding in a paper entitled "Antarctica is Warming."

To achieve their desired result, the AGW scientists, rather than aggregating the data from all of the weather stations throughout Antarctica, chose a single outlier, Rothra Station, which is a "heat island." The term "heat island" means that, because of artificially created heat, such as in an urban area or by an airport, the measurements will inevitably be inaccurate and higher than would other nearby temperature gauges not effected by artificial heat. In this case:

GHCN Antarctic, 8X Actual Trend – Uses Single Warmest Station

Excerpt:

The red circle is surrounding Rothera Point station.



So as we can see, of all the stations available in the antarctic, GHCN has chosen to use a single station on the Antarctic Peninsula to represent an entire continent of the earth for the past 17 years (red circle). But it’s not just any station, it’s a special one. Rothera Point has the single highest trend of any of the adjusted station data.

So much for the trustworthiness of that particular study. But even when there is not a deliberate attempt to perpetrate fraud by cherry-picking data, as EU Referendum points out in an exceptional post, attempting to tease small truths from data that is, even at this point and with modern equipment, still subject to interpretation is probably impossible. Dr. North has written at some length on this, referring to internal studies from various sources, including the US Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, who very frankly conclude in their report that "all is not well with atmospheric and related environmental observations." You can read Dr. North's reasoning and his citations here. His conclusions, I think well warranted, are:

As we noted earlier, however, climate researchers are basing their predictions of doom not on gross observable changes but on minuscule differences in temperature amounting to a fraction of one degree, to the accuracy of two places of decimals.

Of the situation in the US – one of the best and most comprehensive in the world – we see errors of the order of several magnitudes greater than the differences the researchers purport to be able to measure. And that is without factoring in the rest of the world, huge gaps in data and massive discontinuities in the historical record.

In what is acknowledged to be a chaotic system, there is, as one commentator observes, a situation where the precision exceeds the accuracy – this is false precision.

Where the activists are clamouring to keep the supposed rise in global temperature to below 2°C, it must be highly questionable whether the monitoring system is actually capable of detecting a change that small. The climate figures are a sick joke.

There are also, as one would suspect, equally deep flaws at the other end of the process. One of the IPCC's coordinating authors, Dr Philip Lloyd, has come forward, saying that IPCC's method for coordinating research and tying it to their highly politicized "Summary For Policy Makers" is not quite above board. You can read his assessment here. As he concludes: "The process is so flawed that the result is tantamount to fraud. As an authority, the IPCC should be consigned to the scrapheap without delay."

Lastly, the two driving forces behind AGW seem to be money and power. Both meld today in the IPCC's Chairman Mao, Rajendra K. Pachauri, who we learn, like the Goracle, is raking in the cash from carbon trading schemes. Such a conflict of interest should be a complete disqualificaiton. But in the rarified air of the IPCC and the AGW cabal, such conflicts are apparently ignored. I believe that qualifies as "corruption" under any definition of the word.

Bastards.

Prior Posts:

- - Climategate and Surrealism
- - More Climategate Fallout
- - Climategate Update 3
- - Climategate Update 4: CRU Records Worthless
- - Climategate Update 5: IPCC's Chairman Mao
- - Climategate Update 6: Climategate In Video
- - UNEP, Green Religion & Global Governance
- - Climate Update 7: IPCC's Chairman Mao Plays The Obama Card, Peer Review Analyzed, Scientific Method Explained For Paul Krugman
- - Climategate Update 8: The NYT Reports
- - Climategate Update 9: CRU Head Phil Jones Steps Down During Investigation, An MIT Prof Explains The Holes In AGW Theory, And Climate Fraud Is Everywhere
- - Climategate Update 10: Climategate Reverberates From The UK To Down Under
- - Climategate Update 11: Finally An AGW Consensus, "Hockey Stick" Mann Attacks Jones, Gore Goes To Ground
- - Climategate Update 12: The AGW Wall Starts To Crumble, The Smoking Code & The Tiger Woods Index
- - Clmategate Update 13: Hack Job Alert - Washington Post Leads With Climategate and A Complete Defense Of Global Warming
- - Climate Update 14: A Tale of 4 Graphs & An Influential Tree, Hide The Decline Explained, Corrupt Measurements, Goebbelswarming at Copenhagen
- - Climategate Update 15: Copenhagen, EPA Makes Final Finding On CO2, Courts & Clean Air
- - Climategate Update 16: Copenhagen'$ Goal$, Palin Weighs In, As Do Scientists Obama Holds American Economy Hostage Over Cap and Trade
- - Climategate Updage 17: What Greenland's Ice Core Tells Us, The EPA's Reliance On The IPCC, & The Left's War On Coal
- - Gorebbelswarming
- - Krauthammer On The New Socialism & The EPA's Power Grab
- - Climategate Update 18: Ice Core Flicks, Long Term Climate, Anti-Scientific Method Then & Now, Confirmation Bias Or Fraud
- - Climategate Update 20: The Daily Mail Hits The Bulls Eye On Climategate; The AP Spins