The state of ClimateGate today, Mar 12 2010. [krakatoa]

(A series of weekly-ish roundups of the day's Climate news and commentary.)

This is by no means a comprehensive recap. The stories come from a variety of sources, and I highly recommend exploring the linked sites for more breaking news.

(after the break...)

The IPCC has been called to the principal's office. Given that the principal is the U.N., I expect the response in AR5 will be a preface indicating that "boys will be boys" followed by a proclamation that despite the many errors in citing non-peer-reviewed & even non-scientific papers as evidence, the underlying science of AGW is settled as evidenced by the CRU GISS & GHCN data.

Remember, they say, it's not just the CRU -- all the worldwide data showed the same thing. Funny thing about that though. The released NASA emails (via FOIA) reveal NASA/GISS scientists doubted their own data, and placed more trust in the CRU and GHCN data.

This is the third leg upon which "The Science is Settled" pedestal the AGW crowd was dependent. CRU and GHCN conclusions are unraveling as fast as anyone cares to inspect the actual data (if the actual data even remains which in CRU's case is going to require a 3-4 year reconstruction). There is a fourth leg of data from Japan whose provenence and accuracy I don't know. I imagine some enterprising individual or group is examining that last leg as we speak. (or drool, or drink or whatever it is we morons choose to do on FIAF.)

h/t to Ed at HotAir who notes also that in the latest poll, and despite the best efforts of our own press and Sciencytific Journals to squelch the crumbling of "consensus", the American public is increasingly skeptical of the AGW fetishist's claims. While previously we skeptics had been in the minority,

Now, the marginalized group is those who see AGW as an existential threat within their lifetimes. That’s now down to 32% from a high of 40% in 2008, while skeptics on that point have increased to 67%.

Another day, another IPCC claim debunked. The Amazon is far more resistant to drought than the "experts" claimed.

A new NASA-funded study has concluded that Amazon rain forests were remarkably unaffected in the face of once-in-a-century drought in 2005, neither dying nor thriving, contrary to a previously published report and claims by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Old and Busted: Tree-ring proxies, which proved to be very inconsistent requiring the selection of a very tiny group of trees to tell exactly the story AGW proponents wished to find. Even then, they had to "hide the decline" when even that tiny subset of tree data decided to show a cooling trend at an inconvenient time.

New Hotness: Clam-shell proxies, which, owing to their short lifespans (relative to trees), and a directly linear relationship between the levels of Oxygen isotopes and the temperature of the water in which the mussels lived, can provide a "two-to-nine-year window onto the environmental conditions in which they lived."

How clear is the window?

“What we’re getting to here is palaeoweather,” Patterson says. “We can reconstruct temperatures on a sub-weekly resolution, using these techniques. For larger clams we could do daily.”

Unfortunately for the AGW hysterics, the data is not helping their cause. Click on the link, and check out the "Roman Warm Period" as opposed to the Medieval Warm Period, which, you may remember, Jones now hedges (under oath) might have been "at least as warm" as today's temperatures.

Roy Spencer is continuing his study on the Urban Heat Island effect (with links to his previous articles).

Meanwhile, a new paper discusses the error rates of shiny new electronic temperature devices.

Read it all if you want to warm up your brain, but the gist is unsurprising to anyone who has ever used an electronic scale or thermometer:

It was found that, regardless of microclimate effects, sensor and electronic errors in air temperature measurements can be larger than those given in the sensor manufacturer’s specifications.

One wonders if the errors were taken into account for the homogenized temperatures, and if so, which way the "corrections" trended. Well, one doesn't wonder so much about that second part.

... And this Steven Goddard/Anthony Watts article offers up a fascinating juxtaposing of data between two cities whose delta-v in growth rate is demonstrated in part by a very different level in temperature increase.

We have two weather stations in similarly sited urban environments. Until 1965 they tracked each other very closely. Since then, Fort Collins has seen a relative increase in temperature which tracks the relative increase in population. UHI is clearly not dead.

Global Warming! Anthropogenic Climate Changiness. Frick'n cold kills Coral reefs.

``It's very sad...''

``Hopefully, it means the conditions are there for them to be able to recover from this."

Because, you know, it's a complete crap shoot whether organisms that have survived several hundreds of millions of years worth of climate change could survive one cold snap. This willingness to fear the worst possible outcome no matter the odds or the evidence is the foundation of all true-believers of any cult, whatever the cause.

Science and a comprehension of history need not apply. Indeed, those two things most fundamental to the heights to which humanity has risen are anathema to the modern activist. All that matters is that the proper grief is felt for victims of the natural order of things, that someone be blamed, and that something (anything) must be done.

If it's getting too hard to wrap your Valu-Rite pocked brains around the vast evils Global Warming has visited upon our fair Earth, this site appears to be keeping a running tally. And I don't want to cause a panic, but the evolution of giant mutant spiders is one of them.

The Obama administration established an Interagency Ocean Policy Taskforce, whose goal was to develop recommendations that...

...ensures the protection, maintenance, and restoration of the health of ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes ecosystems and resources, enhances the sustainability of ocean and coastal economies, preserves our maritime heritage, provides for adaptive management to enhance our understanding of and capacity to respond to climate change... etc ad nauseam

...dorks all those who depend on the oceans, lakes & waterways of the U.S. for their livlihood right in their evil capitalist squeakholes.

They've released their first report outlining recommended changes, which has environmentalists ecstatic.

"This policy shift comes at a critical time for our oceans for so many reasons."...

[E]nvironmentalists were quick to hail the plan as a critical and timely step to begin healing disintegrating environmental conditions in US coastal waters...

Disintegrating? Like, cross-the-beams kind of shit? Hell, nobody told me it was that serious! I better get a towel and shine up my hitchin' thumb.

Now - I don't have the best memory in the world... but didn't we hit the critical point back in 1971 when Greenpeace was formed? Shouldn't the ocean be a barren place by now where the seed of life can find no purchase? (Free entry into the 2010 Summer HoboMasters tournament for the first moron to name the movie I mangled that line from.)

My point is, if the oceans were critical in the 70s & 80s as every somber newscast and moist-eyed environmental expert told us at every opportunity, after all we've done since then to improve our admittedly non eco-friendly fishing and oil exploration, shouldn't things be at least improving?

That's a rhetorical question of course. Someone who is hellbent for leather to save the world isn't going to let a little thing like the lack of a world in actual distress get in the way of his tilting at for windmills. There is no more apocalyptic scenario to a career activist than the lack of an apocalypse.

The hockey stick is to global warming what St Paul was to Christianity.

Read the review. Buy the book.

Paul "Global Freezing Global Starving Global Warming Global Rampaging Mutant Emus Global [fill in the blank] is going to kill us all!" Erlich gets fisked for Earth Day.

Here we are 40 years later, the U.S. population has increased by more than 50%, traffic volume (miles driven) in the U.S. has increased 160%, and real GDP has increased 204%; and yet air quality in the U.S. is better than ever - nitrous dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and lead have all decreased between 46% and 92% between 1980 and 2008.

Please check out Arthur K.'s link re. windmills in the headlines. In it you'll find a comment that I think is one of the most self be-clowning, and unintentionally incriminating of the whole AGW cult I've read in a while.

Wind costs more, but economists don't measure the full cost of things, especially the social and legacy costs.

Junk Science is when an Economics and Law Professor talks about Science

Because nothing is more scientific than social and legacy costs. Well, other than, you know, what's that thing that deals with lots of numbers and formulas and reproducible results? Oh yeah. Science.

And to pile-on to Arthur's epic series of Aussie AGW insulation follies, the count of state-sponsored arson now stands as high as 106 house fires.

The state of ClimateGate today, Mar 12 2010. [krakatoa]&bodytext=(A series of weekly-ish roundups of the day's Climate news and commentary.) This is by no means a comprehensive recap. The stories come from a variety of sources, and I highly recommend exploring the linked sites for more breaking news....&topic=world_news"> posted by Open Blogger at 09:30 AM

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