Free Republic

Anthony Watts, Lucia Liljegren , and Michael Tobis have all done a good job blogging about Jeff Masters’ egregious math error. His error was that he claimed that a run of high US temperatures had only a chance of 1 in 1.6 million of being a natural occurrence. Here’s his claim: U.S. heat over the past 13 months: a one in 1.6 million eventEach of the 13 months from June 2011 through June 2012 ranked among the warmest third of their historical distribution for the first time in the 1895 – present record. According to NCDC, the odds of this occurring...

Notwithstanding the latest hysterical claims from the sadly politicized climate scientologists of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), insisting 2011 was somehow "a year of extreme weather," serious investigators at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz have just published a sobering analysis in Nature Climate Change  which reconstructs 2000 years of climate within northern Europe.Utilizing tree-ring density measurements from sub-fossil pine trees in northern Scandinavia, the investigators created a sequence dating back to 138 BC. The density measurements are closely correlated with the summer temperatures in a targeted region on the edge of the Nordic taiga, enabling them to...

(CNN) -- The mainland United States, which was largely recovering Monday from a near-nationwide heat wave, has experienced the warmest 12 months since record-keeping began in 1895, a top government science and weather agency announced Monday. The report from the National Climatic Data Center, which is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, does not take into account blistering heat from this month, with 2,116 high temperature marks either broken or tied between July 2 and July 8 in communities nationwide.

No, this is not another article about tree rings, hockey sticks, and rewritten history, although that is one tree in the climate forest. A group of scientists dismissed historical evidence and misled the public about temperature trends. Some dismiss their actions as bad science, but the evidence, particularly exposed in the leaked e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), indicate differently. Many, including those claiming to be climate scientists were misled because they were experts on another tree in another part of the forest. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is not studying climatology, but specialists looking at some...

Americans sweltering in the recent record-breaking heatwave may not believe it - but it seems that our ancestors suffered through much hotter summers in times gone by, several of them within the last 2,000 years. Phew, what a scorcher, Marcus. Let's get in the frigidarium A new study measuring temperatures over the past two millennia has concluded that in fact the temperatures seen in the last decade are far from being the hottest in history. A large team of scientists making a comprehensive study of data from tree rings say that in fact global temperatures have been on a...

Full Title:************************************** This is what global cooling really looks like – new tree ring study shows 2000 years of cooling – previous studies underestimated temperatures of Roman and Medieval Warm Periods Since Princeton’s Dr. Michael Oppenheimer conflated weather with climate last week, proclaiming a short lived heat wave as “This is what global warming really looks like” in a media interview, it seems only fair to show what real science rather than what he and Dr. Trenberth’s government funded advocacy looks like. I can’t wait to see how Dr. Michael Mann tries to poo-poo this one. – AnthonyFrom Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz:...

← John Nielsen-Gammon: Skeptics Are Not Deniers Unexplored Possible Climate Balancing Mechanism Posted on July 10, 2012 by Anthony Watts This visible image of a 93 mile wide deep-ocean plankton eddy was taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite ~ 800 km south of South Africa in the Agulhas current. Image: NASA’s Earth Observatory Effect of CO2 levels on phytoplankton.Story submitted by Don Healy This article opens up a whole new vista into the relationship between CO2 levels, oceanic plant growth and the complex relationships that we have yet to learn about in the...

I've seen two reports today that talked about the weather over the midwest and the corn. The corn crop just about nationwide is a dismal failure due to droughts and prices are expected to climb by at least fifty percent. For many products that use corn, that means BUY IT NOW! Sadly, there is another outcome, farmers were interviewed and for them it means one thing - they can't feed their stock, so they end up going to the slaughterhouse. So soon, there will be a glut of meat on the market, expect prices to plummet (before they rise almost...

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Anthony Watts Lobster plate (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Who says “global warming” doesn’t have some positive value? Well I guess if you are a tofu chomping green that recoils at the thought of eating lobster, you wouldn’t see this in a positive light, but many people do.Miguel Rakiewicz submits this in WUWT Tips and Notes today:Newly abundant and much cheaper lobster thanks to Global Warming. ———————————A story published in The Toronto Star in print on Saturday, 07 July 2012, and on the web on Friday, 06 July 2012, (06 July 2012) http://www.thestar.com/business/article/1223031–lobster-is-now-cheaper-than-cold-cuts-in-some-places-mclobster-anyonereveals that lobster prices have...

The collusion of the climate crowd Posted on July 7, 2012 by Anthony Watts Union of Concerned Scientists (Photo credit: Wikipedia) By Christopher C. HornerFirst published in the Washington Examiner, reposted here with permissionNot long ago, the American Tradition Institute initiated a transparency campaign using federal and state freedom of information laws to learn more about how taxpayer-funded academics use their positions to advance a particular agenda. On its face, this should have been welcomed by the Left, which often lays claim to the “transparency” mantle. It is instead causing great angst.Our project would compile the context to the “Climategate” scandal,...

Adding to Brother Rat’s ongoing storm narrative and also using his bullet(s) point format……. BULLET: Blown away? Like many of the other OSS staff and contributors my family was at ground zero for the surprise fast moving linear windstorm that started in northwest Indiana and spread out like a flood across Ohio, northeast Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia. Washington DC was especially hard hit. My prayers go out to all affected. The storm sped across 700 miles in 12 hours through the Midwest, north Appalachian, and mid-Atlantic states. At peak impact, over 3 million households were without power. The storm...

A picture is worth a thousand words: It isn’t global.The is weather, not climate. It is caused by a persistent blocking high pressure pattern. In a day or two, that red splotch over the eastern USA will be gone.Image from Dr. Ryan N. Maue of WeatherBELL h/t to Joe BastardiUPDATE: Dr. Roy Spencer puts it in perspectiveJune 2012 U.S. Temperatures: Not That Remarkable July 6th, 2012 I know that many journalists who lived through the recent heat wave in the East think the event somehow validates global warming theory, but I’m sorry: It’s summer. Heat waves happen. Sure, many high...

China’s CO2 emission in millions of metric tons from 1980 to 2009:Source, EIA: http://www.eia.gov/countries/img/charts_png/CH_co2con_img.pngFrom Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences: Atmospheric scientists release first “bottom-up” estimates of China’s CO2 emissionsEstimates capitalize on instrumental measurements of CO2 in smokestacks and pollutants in the air by satellites and surface stations Cambridge, Mass. – July 6, 2012 – Atmospheric scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Nanjing University have produced the first “bottom-up” estimates of China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, for 2005 to 2009, and the first statistically rigorous estimates of the uncertainties surrounding China’s CO2 emissions. The...

Chris Mooney | The Politics of Ice and Fire The time to act on global warming is clearly now—right now. In a sane world, Congress would immediately take up carbon cap legislation, and President Obama would be giving a big speech on the issue—and pressing Mitt Romney to explain why he flip-flopped into climate skeptic land, moving in precisely the wrong direction on one of the most important issues to afflict humanity.Moreover, President Obama would recognize this as a smart political move, because the hard-core deniers notwithstanding, public opinion on global warming follows the weather. It always does. Now, with the...

It was for a moment the clash of the Nobel Prize winners on climate changeÂ… just barely, but nothing like this has happened before in the debate-that-isnÂ’t. Normally this is not a show the heavyweights turn up too. But there were three Nobel winners in the room at the same time., Mario Molina and Sherwood Rowland won the 1995 Nobel for work on Ozone. Both of the first two are fans of the man-made global warming theory and they both spoke just prior to notable skeptic Ivar Giaever (who won a Nobel for tunneling in superconductors in 1972). [UPDATE: Watch...

Note: See also the 1997 regime change in global climate data by the same method, hereI’m happy to report that something I recognized and reported back in 2008 related to solar data has been independently confirmed by another source, and was a surprise when it showed up in my inbox two days ago.Readers may recall that for some time I’ve been pointing out a strange anomaly in the Solar Geomagnetic Index that occurred in October 2005. In a story I wrote on Feb 13th, 2008 titled Where have all the sunspots gone? I plotted the Ap data and pointed out...

This is ten different kinds of glorious.Greenies are always lamenting that we need big government to force humanity to treat the planet with their idea of respect, and bemoaning the toll that prosperity ostensibly takes on the environment. It’s a darn shame that they’re stuck on one speed in that line of argument, because in reality, a thriving economy and environmental quality are not mutually exclusive forces: rather, economic growth often means increasing environmental quality. Case in point: John Hanger points out on his energy blog that energy-related carbon dioxide emissions have fallen so sharply in the first three months...

After over 4 days with no power in 95 to 100 degree heat my electric came back on last night ! I just want to remind everyone who have a habit of hanging their head in gloom. Americans are strong and compassionate people. No SHTF around here. There were neighboors getting together having cookouts and making sure everyone who came by had a burger or a hot dog. There were grocery stores giving out food and water. The very few businesses that had power shut their doors to become cooling centers. I had never seen anything quite like it here....

Derechoes have been in the news in Washington as of late. No, that’s not some new breed of super bureaucrat, but it is something from a supercell sized thunderstorm that crossed several states during its lifetime. You may have seen this NOAA image already on a  few news websites:That’s a time lapse radar image capture as the storm progressed from near Chicago to Chesapeake Bay.They’ve been known over a century, and around far longer than that. Wikipedia says that Derecho comes from the Spanish word for “straight”.The word was first used in the American Meteorological Journal in 1888 by Gustavus...

It is hot. I mean, so hot that expletives aren't good enough to cover it. And my air conditioner for my tiny apartment isn't cutting it. It has been between 85 and 90 degrees in here the last few days, which I suppose is marginally better than the 98 degrees outside. I've been griping and whining and moaning to everyone I know about it. Even my poor cat just lays around panting. Yes, that's how hot it is. But I just found out that some friends of mine on the N.E. side of Colorado Springs are dealing with a bunch...