Free Republic

I decided to do myself something that so far NOAA has refused to do: give a CONUS average temperature for the United States from the new ‘state of the art’ United States Climate Reference Network (USCRN). After spending millions of dollars to put in this new network from 2002 to 2008, they are still giving us data from the old one when they report a U.S. national average temperature. As readers may recall, I have demonstrated that old COOP/USHCN network used to monitor U.S. climate is a mishmash of urban, semi-urban, rural, airport and non-airport stations, some of which are...

Ray Evans writes a review below of  Robert Manne’s essay in The Monthly entitled A Dark Victory: How vested interests defeated climate science. (Forgive me Ray for slipping in one or two thoughts of my own below).   Ray Evans is the secretary of The Lavoisier Group one of the first original skeptical groups in Australia (I’ve put a few notes on that at the base of the article). It was Graham Readfearns review (ABC Drum) that apparently brought the Manne article to Ray’s attention.Dear All,Readfearn’s review was a lamentation of defeat and disappointment. So I immediately bought a copy of The...

Fellow RantPolitical.com blogger Jenny Craig (if that is her real name) asks the question, “Why Do Conservative Wingbags Hate Wind Energy?� Assuming that she is talking about wind power and not harnessing the flatulence of bovine bowel activity, I’m more than willing to help a fellow ranter out by answering her question. God knows SOMEONE needs to school her.She leaps off of Romney’s recent policy position that he wants to do away with wind energy tax incentives. She believes Romney (and by association every member of the GOP) are suddenly disconnected from scientific and economic reality for the following reasons:...

Nicola Scafetta sent me this paper yesterday, and I read it with interest, but I have a number of reservations about it, not the least of which is that it is partially based on the work of Landscheidt and the whole barycentric thing which gets certain people into shouting matches. Figure 9 looks to be interesting, but note that it is in generic units, not temperature, so has no predictive value by itself.Fig. 9. Proposed solar harmonic reconstructions based on four beat frequencies. (Top) Average beat envelope function of the model (Eq. (18)) and (Bottom) the version modulated with a...

CARSON CITY – With U.S. Sen. Harry Reid's 5th annual National Clean Energy Summit set to kick off today in Las Vegas, the debate over alternative energy development and the government's role in its future rages on. The purpose of the day-long event as described on the website is to, “once again bring together clean energy visionaries and leaders, public officials, business executives and entrepreneurs, investors, students, and the media to discuss how to empower the public with tools to promote the clean energy economy; increasing jobs and our energy independence.” But the role of the federal government in the...

Full Title:**********************$1.3 billion in ‘clean energy’ subsidies produce 288 permanent jobs, quadruple cost of electricity in Nevada Reid-sponsored National Clean Energy Summit pushes more subsidies as key to Nevada’s futureLAS VEGAS — As U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid prepares to host his fifth annual National Clean Energy Summit on Aug. 7, a Nevada Journal examination of Nevada’s renewable energy sector shows that over $1.3 billion in federal funds funneled into geothermal, solar and wind projects since 2009 has yielded and is projected to yield just 288 permanent, full-time jobs. That’s an initial cost of over $4.6 million per job.Despite...

Progressive organizations behind White House policy have crafted specific, second term plans for President Obama to transform the U.S. Armed Forces into a social work-style organization designed to combat “global warming,” fight global poverty, remedy “injustice,” bolster the United Nations, and increase “peacekeeping” forces worldwide. The groups, already instrumental in influencing Obama’s first term defense agenda, call for massive, second term slashes to the military budget. The savings are to be used to invest in “sustainable energy” and in fighting worldwide climate change. These schemes and many more are documented in the soon-to-be-released book, Fool Me Twice: Obama’s Shocking Plans...

The president vowed to make climate change a top priority in his second term, suggesting that a major assault on industry is coming if he is re-elected. So before the potential onslaught, some real-world perspective on climate change is essential. First, note that the tool used to both develop future global climate scenarios and to panic the public on meteorological mayhem is atmospheric modeling. Most of my nearly 35 years of professional life has been involved with atmospheric modeling in one... --snip-- What I and so many other air modelers have discovered is that, as impressive as modeling has become,...

The Solyndra scandal took a big step up the ladder today, as ABC News uncovers new evidence that shows fears over a collapse reached all the way into the West Wing. An OMB analyst tried to raise red flags on the Obama administration’s attempt to rescue the now-bankrupt green-tech firm, before the Department of Energy rejected her advice and restructured the loans in March 2011, which illegally subordinated taxpayers in case of default. An e-mail from Kelly Colyar in August 2011 reminded recipients that she had predicted that very scenario — and that White House chief of staff had been...

Climate change has come to New Jersey, according to Environment New Jersey, a statewide environmental advocacy group. The organization released a report Thursday that attributes this year’s extreme weather to global warming. “Certainly, we have a problem on our hands,” said Matt Elliott, a representative from Environment New Jersey. “We need to do everything we can to cut carbon pollution today.”

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Anthony Watts On Wednesday at 10AM ET (7AM PT) the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will conduct a hearing on (take your pick) global warming climate change climate disruption. Dr. John Christy will be there, but it is confirmed that Dr. Richard Muller of BEST will NOT be testifying.  From what I hear it will be webcast, details below.It is called: “Update on the Latest Climate Change Science and Local Adaptation Measures.” You can watch the webcast at http://www.epw.senate.govFull Committee hearing:Update on the Latest Climate Change Science and Local Adaptation Measures.Wednesday, August 1,...

Dems blame weather on climate change By Zack Colman - 08/01/12 01:07 PM ET Droughts, heat waves and other severe weather are being exacerbated by climate change, several Senate Democrats contended at a hearing Wednesday. Democrats on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works held the hearing to call attention to what they said are the risks of climate change highlighted by severe weather this summer. They also sought to blame Republicans for holding up action to prevent or slow global warming. “I think we have to recognize that extreme weather conditions have a severe burden and cost on...

Aug 1 (Reuters Point Carbon) - In an effort to dissuade companies in key industries facing new carbon costs from leaving the state, California is considering giving them millions of dollars worth of additional free greenhouse gas allowances, state's air regulator said on Monday. California's cap-and-trade program seeks to emulate tactics used in the European Union and Australia to address emission "leakage" - a term describing the exodus of employers from a state or country in order to sidestep environmental costs. The California Air Resources Board (ARB), the regulator of the forthcoming program, held a workshop in Sacramento on Monday...

VANITY: I blocked that horrendous tripe called "Current Channel" from my Direct TV Satellite service.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California's electricity sector is more vulnerable to climate change than previously thought, as higher temperatures will impede the state's ability to generate and transmit power while demand for air conditioning rises, a report said Tuesday. The data is part of the latest report released by the California Natural Resources Agency and the California Energy Commission, which are trying to help state and local leaders prepare for life in the hotter, drier California of the future. (Report: http://r.reuters.com/zag79s) Wildlife, agriculture and coastal communities are also at serious risk from climate change, the report said. Sea levels could...

Andrew Revkin asked me to provide comments on this article of his where the National Climatic Data Center was asked to respond to Watts et al 2012:A Closer Look at Climate Studies Promoted Before PublicationHere is what I sent to him:My comments on Thorne’s response are pretty simple.They still refuse to get out of the office, to examine firsthand the condition of the network and try to come up with hands on approaches for dealing with station inhomogeneity, but instead focus of trying to spot patterns in data and massage it. In my view this is the wrong approach and...

From the Harvard University  news service and the what are they smoking department, comes this suggestion that apparently it never was ozone damaging CFC refrigerants at all, it was those nasty thunderstorms wot done it.  They say: “Recent studies have suggested that the number and intensity of such storms are linked to climate changes…which could in turn lead to increased ozone loss and greater levels of harmful UV radiation reaching the Earth’s surface, and potentially higher rates of skin cancer.” I have a pretty hard time believing this one, because, well, it’s like Rube Goldberg machine construct where lots of...

I’m a bit burnt out, so this is a just a few notes to quench some speculations about Steve McIntyre’s role and to help everyone understand what this week has been like.

Billions of years ago, before Earth's atmosphere had oxygen, it periodically possessed a "haze" of organic chemicals including methane, boffins have discovered. During these periods the planet's air was more like that of Titan, ice moon of Saturn, than the stuff we breathe today. "Models have previously suggested that the Earth's early atmosphere could have been warmed by a layer of organic haze," says Dr Aubrey Zerkle of Newcastle uni. "Our geochemical analyses of marine sediments from this time period provide the first evidence for such an atmosphere." According to Zerkle and his colleagues, during the period 2.5 to 2.65...

WASHINGTON – The verdict is in: Global warming is occurring and emissions of greenhouse gases caused by human activity are the main cause. This, according to Richard A. Muller, professor of physics at UC Berkeley, MacArthur Fellow and co-founder of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project..... ....Benjamin D. Santer, a climate researcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a lead author of the 1995 U.N. climate report, said he welcomed the involvement of another research group into “detection and attribution” of climate change and its causes. But he also said he found it troubling that Muller claimed such definitive...