Posted on January 25, 2015 by John Hinderaker in Climate

2014 Was One of the 3% Coldest Years in the Last 10,000

Climate alarmists play a number of tricks to try to make their catastrophic anthropogenic global warming theory seem plausible. One of the most important is that they focus on a ridiculously short period of time, beginning either in the late 19th century or at the beginning of the 20th. This is, of course, not even the blink of an eye in geologic time. Given that the Earth began emerging from the Little Ice Age in the mid to late 19th Century, it is hardly surprising–and a very good thing–that from then until now, temperatures have tended to rise.
Alarmists shriek that 2014 was the warmest year ever! But that claim is absurd if put in the context of the Earth’s recent history. As Dr. Tim Ball writes:

In fact, 2014 was among the coldest 3 percent of years of the last 10,000, but that doesn’t suit the political agenda.

This chart shows Northern Hemisphere temperature changes over the last 10,000 years, based on ice core data. Dr. Ball explains: “The red line, added to the original diagram, imposes the approximate 20th century temperatures (right side) against those of the last 10,000 years.”

If the Earth continues to be warm, temperatures will be more nearly aligned with what they have generally been over the last 10,000 years.
There are many other problems with global warming alarmism, of course, and Dr. Ball touches on several of them. For one, the quality of the surface temperature record is terrible, nowhere near good enough to support the alarmists’ claims of precision. For another, the surface temperature record has been corrupted. The records are maintained by alarmist organizations, which have repeatedly “adjusted” historical data to make the past look cooler and the present warmer. This is one of many examples; it relates to New Zealand, where historical temperature records have been “adjusted” by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research:

Typically these adjustments are carried out surreptitiously, and only come to light when someone comes across contemporaneous temperature records from, say, the 1930s, and finds that the temperatures reported at the time are different from the ones now claimed by the same agencies. If you are willing to spend many billions of dollars, as the world’s governments are, you can buy a lot of rewriting of history.
So next time one of your liberal friends tells you that 2014 was the hottest year on record, and therefore we must turn what is left of our economy over to the Obama administration, you can tell him that actually, 2014 was one of the 3% coldest years of the last 10,000.


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Posted on January 25, 2015 by Steven Hayward in Climate

When Climate Heretics Speak. . .

. . . They usually mop the floor with the climatistas. That’s one reason why the climate campaign has resorted to rank conformism and outright bullying.
Matt Ridley offered his observations about the state of things in an article in the London Times a few days ago entitled “My Life as A Climate Lukewarmer.”

I am a climate lukewarmer. That means I think recent global warming is real, mostly man-made and will continue but I no longer think it is likely to be dangerous and I think its slow and erratic progress so far is what we should expect in the future. That last year was the warmest yet, in some data sets, but only by a smidgen more than 2005, is precisely in line with such lukewarm thinking.
This view annoys some sceptics who think all climate change is natural or imaginary, but it is even more infuriating to most publicly funded scientists and politicians, who insist climate change is a big risk. My middle-of-the-road position is considered not just wrong, but disgraceful, shameful, verging on scandalous. I am subjected to torrents of online abuse for holding it, very little of it from sceptics.
I was even kept off the shortlist for a part-time, unpaid public-sector appointment in a field unrelated to climate because of having this view, or so the headhunter thought. In the climate debate, paying obeisance to climate scaremongering is about as mandatory for a public appointment, or public funding, as being a Protestant was in 18th-century England.
Kind friends send me news almost weekly of whole blog posts devoted to nothing but analysing my intellectual and personal inadequacies, always in relation to my views on climate. Writing about climate change is a small part of my life but, to judge by some of the stuff that gets written about me, writing about me is a large part of the life of some of the more obsessive climate commentators. It’s all a bit strange.

Freeman Dyson

There’s more; definitely worth reading the whole thing. Equally interesting is a back and forth exchange of public letters between the London Independent’s science editor, Steve Connor, and the legendary Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson, who has become one of the leading climate skeptics, much to the supreme annoyance of the climatistas. Because of Dyson’s eminence in science, he can’t be attacked or dismissed for supposedly bad motives or other low causes. Connor tries to corner him semi-politely, but Dyson won’t fall for it.
A few samples:

From: Freeman Dyson
To: Steve Connor
. . . The whole point of this discussion is that I am interested in a far wider range of questions, while you are trying to keep us talking about narrow technical questions that I consider unimportant.
You ask me where the extra trapped heat has gone, but I do not agree with the models that say the extra trapped heat exists. I cannot answer your question because I disagree with your assumptions.
From: Steve Connor
To: Freeman Dyson
Sorry you feel that way, I hope we can get back on track. I was only trying to find out where your problem lies with respect to the scientific consensus on global warming.

Connor’s use of “your problem” is very telling here, like an elementary school teacher correcting the math mistakes of an 8^th grader. Anyway:

From: Freeman Dyson
To: Steve Connor
. . . The most I expect is that you might listen to what I am saying. I am saying that all predictions concerning climate are highly uncertain. On the other hand, the remedies proposed by the experts are enormously costly and damaging, especially to China and other developing countries. On a smaller scale, we have seen great harm done to poor people around the world by the conversion of maize from a food crop to an energy crop. This harm resulted directly from the political alliance between American farmers and global-warming politicians. Unfortunately the global warming hysteria, as I see it, is driven by politics more than by science. If it happens that I am wrong and the climate experts are right, it is still true that the remedies are far worse than the disease that they claim to cure.
I wish that The Independent would live up to its name and present a less one-sided view of the issues.

Boom!