Doug Craig over at Redding.com recently published an article covering the abbreviated history of research regarding greenhouse gases and the history of our scientific understanding of them. He naturally skipped those researchers and scientists that discuss the cooling affect of aerosols.

Mr. Craig’s article is pretty typical of the problem in this debate for both sides. His article is filled with references to “hoax” in this discussion. Hoax is a word that is often referenced by some that doubt global warming predictions (or more precisely, the efforts to reverse the influence). In this case, Mr. Craig is making fun of it with the natural assumption that he thinks such people are fools for thinking it is a “hoax.”

Is global warming a hoax?  Hardly. According to Dictionary.com a hoax is:

hoax (hks)

n.

1. An act intended to deceive or trick.

2. Something that has been established or accepted by fraudulent means.

tr.v. hoaxed, hoax·ing, hoax·es

To deceive or cheat by using a hoax.

Does anybody really think that carbon dioxide is not a greenhouse gas? Is anyone really saying that CO2 doesn’t have the chemical and electrical properties that allow it to absorb certain wavelengths of energy? I don’t think so. There is no disputing the properties of CO2. The discussion is about its relative influence on the rest of the atmosphere and the cost to treasure and life.

Mr. Craig makes the following opening statement:

Whenever I hear someone say that Global Warming or Climate Change is a hoax, I wonder if they realize this “hoax” is nearly two centuries old.

Mr. Craig is linking scientific discovery of the physical properties of gases with political discussion of reversing industrial production. Mr. Craig is alluding that because there is good scientific understanding of the nature of a molecule that there is good scientific understanding of the Earth’s oceans and atmosphere. Mr. Craig is challenging some that may believe that “fixing” carbon dioxide production with our current industrial knowledge may condemn millions to a life of less wealth and possibly death.

Of course, if people on both sides of the issue continue to use words like “hoax” then we will never have a real discussion of the issues. Mr. Craig appears to be a fairly-well educated individual – it is too bad that he is fanning the flames of confrontation rather than a true discussion on both sides of the issue.

This is absolutely unbelievable. It now appears that Mr. Al Gore, former Vice President of the United States and Nobel prize winner for his theories on global warming, may be stepping back from some of his strong beliefs.

“Over the years I have been among those who focused most of all on CO2, and I think that’s still justified,” Gore told Newsweek . “But a comprehensive plan to solve the climate crisis has to widen the focus to encompass strategies for all” of the greenhouse culprits identified in the Nasa study.”

I have not posted on this site for awhile as I was becoming disgruntled at the lack of real conversation that was happening on the subject. Believers in global warming seemed to be unwilling to acknowledge that there were some concerns about using computer model projections to drive massive and expensive changes in our economic and social structure. The worst among them even started to call people that had concerns names such as “Neanderthals” or “criminals” or worse. On the opposite side, those with doubts have not been able to layout a fairly consistent scientific description of the various natural phenomenon that were occurring in the world and offer proactive discussion to remedy changes.

Worse, neither side wants to do the truly difficult things in solving many of the energy problems that are occurring in the world. Everyone seems to have their head in the sand on the realities of energy and its importance in the world economy.

Maybe now that Mr. Gore appears to be pulling back from his “science is settled” hard line, I should re-join the discussion. Look for more posts in the future.

Below are the highlights of the article that I read that discusses this. You can read the entire discussion at Prison Planet.

Before we get too excited, Gore is not backing away from his support for the theory of man-made climate change, but his concession that carbon dioxide only accounted for 40% of warming according to new studies could seriously harm efforts to tax CO2, that evil, life-giving gas that humans exhale and plants absorb.

“Gore acknowledged to Newsweek that the findings could complicate efforts to build a political consensus around the need to limit carbon emissions,” reports BB News.

---

“Over the years I have been among those who focused most of all on CO2, and I think that’s still justified,” Gore told Newsweek . “But a comprehensive plan to solve the climate crisis has to widen the focus to encompass strategies for all” of the greenhouse culprits identified in the Nasa study.”

Gore now blames soot and methane for the majority of global warming, leaving the door open for a tax on livestock, a tax on meat, a tax on milk, and on and on until he changes his mind again and blames another culprit so that too can be taxed.

In another indictment of Gore’s accuracy in warning about climate change, he has now virtually abandoned scientific “facts” in favor of characterizing his Inconvenient Truth presentation in the context of a religious sermon.

“Simply laying out the facts won’t work,” admits Gore.

Before I beat up on RealClimate, I want to make sure that you understand that nearly every blog administrator must delete some comments. It is a sad fact that the more popular the blog, the more spammers will use the forum as a way to advertise products and services that most respectable individuals do not care to read about. If you thought your email was filled with “adult” offers, start a blog and you will be amazed at the adult traffic! Most of us use a tool such as Akismet for the heavy lifting and that filter service will occassionally catch a good comment in the mix of all of the spam.

However, it is pretty clear that the administrators of RealClimate.org intentionally “spike” comments. I know that my comments have been rejected in the past (Gavin said they deleted comments on comment 168 of a discussion a year ago) and I have complained that RealClimate does not always act in manner that is fitting with their profession, their education, and their leadership. I am unsure why they do this, there are plenty that agree with nearly everything they write so it seems foolish to silence their detractors.

I just read on Watts Up With That that there is a new site up for people to publish their rejected RealClimate comments. Go to http://rcrejects.wordpress.com/ and you can post your comments that were spike at RealClimate for all to read. This seems kind of sad and kind of funny. Brittney Spears, Paris Hilton, and U2 have fan sites for people to comment about their activities. This is the first time that I have seen a fan site about another blog that was created to deal with their lack of transparency.

Personally, I won’t use this new service for any comment that I would post.  I have already learned to keep a copy of my comments and if they are spiked then I put them here on this site. For anyone else that doesn’t have a forum like this, the RC Rejects blog may be a good second chance.

The best thing, of course, would be that RealClimate not reject comments.

The subject of windmills killing birds has been discussed occasionally on the web for several years. Every time the subject gets popular, it suddenly seems to drop out of vogue to discuss. The argument is always that the bird fatalities are a fraction of other human activity and therefore not significant.

There is little doubt that windmills kill birds and bats. Their remains are found at the foot of windmills on a regular basis. Robert Bryce, the author of “Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of ‘Energy Independence‘”, “Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, and the Death of Enron“, and “Cronies: How Texas Business Became American Policy– and Brought Bush to Power” recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the wind energy industry is being held to a different standard than other energy companies.

It does seem true and plausible that “green” groups that love to go after oil and coal companies would turn a blind eye to “one of their own” such as wind farms. We all know that the courts are used to serve the self-interest of organizations as opposed to just being used to fairly apply the law. The real travesty here is that federal investigators that get pushed to pursue one energy company aren’t pushed to pursue all forms of law breakers.

A few interesting clips from the Wall Street Journal article:

On Aug. 13, ExxonMobil pleaded guilty in federal court to killing 85 birds that had come into contact with crude oil or other pollutants in uncovered tanks or waste-water facilities on its properties. The birds were protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which dates back to 1918. The company agreed to pay $600,000 in fines and fees.

ExxonMobil is hardly alone in running afoul of this law. Over the past two decades, federal officials have brought hundreds of similar cases against energy companies. In July, for example, the Oregon-based electric utility PacifiCorp paid $1.4 million in fines and restitution for killing 232 eagles in Wyoming over the past two years. The birds were electrocuted by poorly-designed power lines.

Yet there is one group of energy producers that are not being prosecuted for killing birds: wind-power companies. And wind-powered turbines are killing a vast number of birds every year.

A July 2008 study of the wind farm at Altamont Pass, Calif., estimated that its turbines kill an average of 80 golden eagles per year. The study, funded by the Alameda County Community Development Agency, also estimated that about 10,000 birds—nearly all protected by the migratory bird act—are being whacked every year at Altamont.

Altamont’s turbines, located about 30 miles east of Oakland, Calif., kill more than 100 times as many birds as Exxon’s tanks, and they do so every year. But the Altamont Pass wind farm does not face the same threat of prosecution, even though the bird kills at Altamont have been repeatedly documented by biologists since the mid-1990s.

---

According to the American Wind Energy Association, the industry’s trade association, each megawatt of installed wind-power results in the killing of between one and six birds per year. At the end of 2008, the U.S. had about 25,000 megawatts of wind turbines.

---

Why aren’t wind companies prosecuted for killing eagles and other birds? “The fix here is not easy or cheap,” Mr. Lee told me. He added that he doesn’t expect to see any prosecutions of the politically correct wind industry.

This is a double standard that more people—and not just bird lovers—should be paying attention to. In protecting America’s wildlife, federal law-enforcement officials are turning a blind eye to the harm done by “green” energy.

I first saw this on Net-Cool which is a great site to subscribe to for finding really interesting things on the web.

This movie explains some of the reasons of concern for monitoring the increase in temperatures that we have felt since the 1960s.  It is very well done and enjoyable to watch.  Unlike An Inconvenient Truth, it admits that this is not pure imagery but some CGI has been done.

If you can handle the bandwidth, you will see better graphics here rather than watching the embedded YouTube video below.

As nations around the world begin to plan for Copenhagen to discuss the next generation Kyoto treaty, it is increasingly obvious that they will be ineffective.

Chief among the reasons for this ineffectiveness is that with the price of oil at its current state, it is simply not cost effective to use alternative fuels that will dump less CO2 into the atmosphere. The oil producing nations are probably not maintaining crude at this level to doom the planet to disaster, they are simply smart business people that are providing their “drugs” to the “addicts” at a price and in a way that will insure that no one can ever move off.

This is the basic problem with crude oil as an energy source. No matter how cheaply new liquid fuels can be developed, it is almost assured that oil can be dropped in price to match the new economic competitor such that oil will be cheaper.

Below are selected clips from the Wall Street Journal regarding the failing of companies that were trying to compete with liquid gold from the ground.

Two-thirds of U.S. biodiesel production capacity now sits unused, reports the National Biodiesel Board. Biodiesel, a crucial part of government efforts to develop alternative fuels for trucks and factories, has been hit hard by the recession and falling oil prices.

The global credit crisis, a glut of capacity, lower oil prices and delayed government rules changes on fuel mixes are threatening the viability of two of the three main biofuel sectors — biodiesel and next-generation fuels derived from feedstocks other than food. Ethanol, the largest biofuel sector, is also in financial trouble, although longstanding government support will likely protect it.

Earlier this year, GreenHunter Energy Inc., operator of the nation’s largest biodiesel refinery, stopped production and in June said it may have to sell its Houston plant, only a year after politicians presided over its opening. Dozens of other new biodiesel plants, which make a diesel substitute from vegetable oils and animal fats, have stopped operating because biodiesel production is no longer economical.

Producers of next-generation biofuels — those using nonfood renewable materials such as grasses, cornstalks and sugarcane stalks — are finding it tough to attract investment and ramp up production to an industrial scale. The sector suffered a major setback this summer after a federal jury ruled that Cello Energy of Alabama, a plant-fiber-based biofuel producer, had defrauded investors. Backed by venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, Cello was expected to supply 70% of the 100.7 million gallons of cellulosic biofuels that the Environmental Protection Agency planned to blend into the U.S. fuel supply next year. The alleged fraud will almost certainly prevent the EPA from meeting its targets next year, energy analysts say.

---

Domestically produced biofuels were supposed to be an answer to reducing America’s reliance on foreign oil. In 2007, Congress set targets for the U.S. to blend 36 billion gallons of biofuels a year into the U.S. fuel supply in 2022, from 11.1 billion gallons in 2009. That would increase biofuels’ share of the liquid-fuel mix to roughly 16% from 5%, based on U.S. Energy Information Administration fuel-demand projections.

---

Corn ethanol, which has been supported by government blending mandates and other subsidies for years, has come under fire for driving up the price of corn and other basic foodstuffs. While it will continue to be produced, corn ethanol’s dominant role in filling the biofuels’ blending mandate was set to shrink through 2022. Cellulosic ethanol, derived from the inedible portions of plants, and other advanced fuels were expected to surpass corn ethanol to fill close to half of all biofuel mandates in that time.

---

The business models for most biofuel companies were predicated on a much higher price of crude oil, making biofuels more attractive. A government-guaranteed market was also central to business plans.

But once blending mandates were postponed, oil prices plunged and the recession crushed fuel demand, many biodiesel companies started operating in the red. Even ethanol producers, which have enjoyed government subsidies and growing federal requirements to blend it into gasoline, have been operating at a loss over the past year. Numerous established producers have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy-court protection.

Critics of the biofuels boom say government support helped create the mess in the first place. In 2007, biofuels including ethanol received $3.25 billion in subsidies and support — more than nuclear, solar or any other energy source, according to the Energy Information Administration. With new stimulus funding, this figure is expected to jump. New Energy Finance Ltd., an alternative-energy research firm, estimates that blending mandates alone would provide over $33 billion in tax credits to the biofuels industry from 2009 through 2013.

---

Mr. Obama, who supported biofuels throughout his campaign, is working to roll out grants and loan guarantees for bio-refineries and green fuel projects, said Heather Zichal, a White House energy adviser. The pace of the disbursements should speed up this fall, administration officials say.

---

The European Union dealt the final blow this spring when it slapped a tariff on U.S. biodiesel, killing what had been the industry’s main sales outlet.

Boone Pickens and Ted Turner are well respected businessmen (the former a big  investor and the latter a media mogul and founder of CNN). Both have a history of speaking their mind on public issues and both have a history of making huge sums of money.

While I certainly do not begrudge this gentlemen the right to speak their mind, I wonder if this message (that may be good for America) also is good for their business interests. Mr. Pickens is renown in the energy sector and a large scale switch to natural gas would likely help his wallet. Mr. Turner is a very large landowner in the western States and my gut is that he has found large deposits of natural gas under some of his holdings.

All that being said, I tend to agree with the core of their opinion. The United States should concentrate more on natural gas. It would most likely help the environment and it would help to lessen the choke hold that foreign interests have on our economy.

The following parts of their opinion appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

Renewable energy and clean-burning natural gas are the basis of a new strategy the world needs to create a cleaner and more secure future. And the global transformation to a clean-energy economy may be the greatest economic opportunity of the 21st century. According to the authoritative Potential Gas Committee (administered by the Colorado School of Mines), the U.S. sits on top of massive reservoirs of natural gas—an estimated 2,000 trillion cubic feet—that contain more energy than all the oil in Saudi Arabia.

Harnessing this large supply—plus developing wind, solar and biofuel energy sources—is essential to achieve three strategic national priorities:

• Energy security: The internal combustion engine makes us dependent on oil that’s concentrated in a handful of countries in some of the world’s most volatile regions. In June, we imported 374 million barrels of oil, nearly two-thirds of what we used, at a cost of $24.7 billion. With 70% of imported oil going into cars and trucks, our transportation system is perilously at risk to shaky oil markets and even shakier regimes.

• Economic security: Last year more than $155 billion was invested in clean energy technologies such as wind and solar, and China and India plan to invest hundreds of billions in renewable energy sources. The annual market for clean energy may escalate in the next decade to between $1 trillion and $2 trillion. The race is on.

• Climate security: Likewise, the clock is ticking on potentially devastating climate changes. We already are witnessing the disintegration of polar ice, melting glaciers, rising sea levels and altered weather patterns. But if we act now, we can prevent catastrophic human and economic impacts.

---

In the electricity sector, natural gas is already cheap, available and ready to meet the nation’s power needs while improving climate security. It emits about half the carbon dioxide per British thermal unit of energy, and far fewer of the heavy metals than does coal.

---

…New coal plants should be required to combine natural gas with the coal they burn, resulting in cleaner emissions, and every power plant should meet strict carbon-emissions standards.

---

In the transportation sector, renewable energy and natural gas can also be deployed immediately. For a quarter century, natural-gas vehicle technology has been available but stymied by lack of leadership. Of the 10 million natural gas vehicles in the world, fewer than 150,000 are in the U.S.

We can begin transitioning the nation’s fleet of 6.5 million 18-wheelers that run regular routes. It would take just 20 refueling stations along a single highway to get trucks from one coast to the other. Centrally fueled urban business and government fleets also can quickly move to natural gas. The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are in the process of buying new natural gas vehicles for their fleets, and many municipalities are harnessing the economic and environmental benefits of natural gas-powered buses.

---

The economic, environmental, and national security imperatives of America’s energy posture are clear, as is the proven potential of domestic natural resources like gas, wind and solar power. Coupled with energy efficiency, these resources have the potential to help jump-start the economy, drive prosperity and reduce emissions well into the 21st century. The keys are in our hands. All we have to do is unlock the door and start the engine.

I am often asked if the reduction of the size of glaciers is the fault of global warming. My standard answer is that I don’t know as the evidence is far from conclusive.

A case in point is a graph from the USGS fact sheet:

Two conclusions are fairly obvious from the above graph.  First, the size of glacier recession has been occurring almost since the time when we started measuring the size back in the late 50s.  The second is that the reduction seemed to increase rather rapidly in the late 80s and early 90s. If we draw a straight line to average the reduction from 1960 to 1975, we will see a totally different rate as compared to the line that averages 1980 to 2005.

There are several factors that influence the size and positive or negative growth of a glacier and if you read some of the Related Posts below you will learn much more.  It isn’t all the average temperature in the valley. So it is hard to say that there is a direct causation especially since the larger the glacier, the more likely it will affect its micro-climate to create the conditions to allow it to keep growing (it chills the air above it promoting snowfall). Therefore, there is a solid line of reasoning that says that once a glacier retreats a certain percentage, it will continue to rapidly shrink.

However, if we compare the glacier curve above with the famed Mauna Loa CO2 readings, you see that in the late 80s we tripped over the feared 340PPM which many feel is the trigger point for CO2 causing real damage to the climate. So there is a real argument to be made that CO2 is the cause.

The answer to the question: I don’t think we really know.  It is to complicated of a climate model for us to completely understand. As I have argued before (primarily in the comments of various posts such as this one), I don’t believe this stuff one way or the other. I think we need to spend a lot of time and effort to figure this out definitively. The answer to the question is simply too important to guess at.

AccuWeather.com has an excellent update on the status of the Arctic ice last month – July 2009.  Looks like the melting was pretty bad.

And here is an image from NSIDC (National Science and Ice Data Center) showing the current ice coverage and the median.

I had earlier mentioned the review of the “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States” report that Climate Skeptic was doing.  In that review, Climate Skeptic called the following graph and the stated conclusions from it BS.

Evidently the original author didn’t like his review and challenged him publicly.  This is fantastic as it allows for the open sharing and discussing of the ideas, thoughts and conclusions.  There needs to be more of this type of exchange on critical issues such as climate change.

Climate Skeptics basic charge is that the increase in disruptions is more a result in differences in data collection over time than it is a change in climate disruptions.  Such a rapid increase in events is almost surely not solely due to weather.

So, in keeping with this dialogue, Climate Skeptic has replied.  The reply is almost better reading and more educational than the original so please click through and read the Climate Skeptic review.

Which leads one to wonder if there is a better source of data for understanding power outages over time?  Is there a reputable source that keeps track of disturbances in the system? Of course there is!  One company that makes a living out of providing real-time information on the health of the utility industry is Genscape.  I don’t know how far back Genscape’s data is gathered but you would think the government would make efforts to use a better source – unless of course the government doesn’t like the conclusions that real data will lead to!

If you read this site often, you will know that I am an engineer by training (even though I don’t currently practice). I tend to respect this profession a great deal as being fairly straight-forward and hard working. As a group, they also tend to be a pretty smart bunch.

One of the major trade rags in engineering is C&EN (Chemical and Engineering News). It is edited by Mr. Rudy Baum. If you aren’t in that trade, you would probably never pick up an issue so you may not be familiar with it. I haven’t read the publication in a long time but was recently made aware of a bit of controversy by Climate Depot. While the readers of C&EN are likely not climatologists, the science of CO2 and its affect on the atmosphere is very steeped in chemistry which their target market knows a bit about.

Mr. Baum wrote an opinion in June that dealt with global warming and some of the recent politics of the cap and trade legislation. While Mr. Baum is certainly entitled to his opinion on this subject, it appears that his readers were not very happy with his stance and some of the phrasing that he used. I won’t reproduce the editorial here as you can jump over read it for yourself.  I will bring out a few excerpts that have been published in the recent letters to the editor.  Some of them even call for the firing of the man!

I am not going to identify the individual writer of each comment by name.  I don’t think I have that right.  I will simply suggest that you read all of the letters to the editor that are posted for July 27, 2009.

…Instead, what should be a noble organization is turning into another left-wing mouthpiece. I don’t agree with your climate-change views, and I am not happy that you continue to use the pulpit of your editorials to promote your left-wing opinions…

---

…Although under your editorial leadership, I suspect we would be treated to a biased and skewed version of scientific debate. I think its time to find a new editor.

---

I am always intrigued by claims that science is settled, especially when it comes to something as complex as climate. Rudy Baum’s remarks are particularly disquieting because of his hostility toward skepticism, which is part of every scientist’s soul. Let’s cut to the chase with some questions for Baum: Which of the 20-odd major climate models has settled the science, such that all of the rest are now discarded?
…

---

…It makes sense to reduce the combustion of carbon-based fuels, if only to preserve their use as feedstocks for industry. However, I am appalled at the condescending attitude of Rudy Baum, Al Gore, President Barack Obama, et al., who essentially tell us that there is no need for further research—that the matter is solved….

---

Your editorial in the June 22 issue of C&EN was a disgrace. It was filled with misinformation, half-truths, and ad hominem attacks on those who dare disagree with you. Shameful!
…

---

…The more people try to trivialize global warming, the more we and our descendants will suffer the results, some of which have already been quantified (for example, glacier melting and polar ice disappearing). Weather disruptions and shore erosion, for example, will begin to occur. The people who deny global warming are in the same class as those who rejected the negative effects of DDT, those who denied the negative effects of CFCs on the atmosphere, and so on.


---

…The only demonstrated way forward is nuclear power. But those who oppose nuclear power are somewhat similar to climate-change deniers. I predict nuclear power will be accepted when the fear of climate change exceeds the fear of nuclear power. When might this happen? Not soon. Among the population at large, climate-change fears are not even in the top 10 worries.


---

…I can’t accept as facts the reports of federal agencies, because they have become political and are more likely to support the regime in power than not. Baum’s attempt to close out debate goes against all my scientific training, and to hear this from my ACS is certainly alarming to me.


---

Your comments about the climate-change deniers are right on target. In fact, your closing paragraph, “Sow doubt; make up statistics,” etc., was one of the best summaries I’ve seen of the deceitful practices that the deniers are allowed to get away with….

---

…We cannot continue to burn organic fuels at billions of point sources without usefully recapturing the carbon (utilities should be able to do this)….

---

I am furious that idiots such as Rep. Joe L. Barton (R-Texas) helped pass this cap-and-trade bill. How much of a payoff are they getting from General Electric to pass this stupid bill?…

---

Having worked as an atmospheric chemist for many years, I have extensive experience with environmental issues, and I usually agree with Rudy Baum’s editorials. But his use of “climate-change deniers” to pillory scientists who do not believe climate change is a crisis is disingenuous and unscientific….

---

…Given the climate’s complexity and these and other uncertainties, are we justified in legislating major increases in our energy costs unilaterally guided only by a moral imperative to “do our part” for Earth’s climate? I am among many environmentally responsible citizen-scientists who think this is stupid, both because our emissions reductions will be dwarfed by increases elsewhere (China and India, for example) and because the models have large uncertainties….

---

…Finally, I have very little in common with the philosophy of the Heartland Institute and other “free-market fanatics,” and I consider myself a progressive Democrat. Nevertheless, we scientists should know better than to propound scientific truth by consensus and to excoriate skeptics with purple prose.

---

The editor’s page of C&EN should not be a political page. Rudy Baum has been pushing the global warming (conveniently changed now to “climate change”) hypothesis as fact very strongly for some time now. He denigrates as foolish and ignorant folks who do not swallow the global warming hypothesis and his comments are rather arrogant….

---

…Are the temperature measurements accurate? Eighty-nine percent of the 860 monitoring stations inspected by meteorologist Anthony Watts and volunteers from the surfacestations.org project failed to meet the National Weather Service’s siting requirements (they were too close to artificial heating or radiating/reflecting sources). This is not the only information that does not support Baum’s hypothesis….

---

…I would like to see the ACS Board cap Baum’s political pen and trade him to either the New York Times or Washington Post.

---

In the interest of brevity, I can limit my response to the diatribe of the editor-in-chief in the June 22 edition of C&EN to one word: Disgusting.

There are many more comments in the letters to Mr. Baum.  Many of them are quite well written and make excellent points.  I encourage you to go there and spend a few minutes reading them.

I found this study by reading the blog at AccuWeather.com.  If you are interested in climate, then you should spend time reading what the meteorologists over there have to say.

A study by 3 researchers and published in the Journal of Geophysical Research has concluded that the weather variations (both increases and decreases) are the result of natural climate processes. They find that the Southern Oscillation is a key indicator of changing global atmospheric temperatures seven months later.

The paper is titled “Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature” and following is the abstract:

Time series for the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) and global tropospheric temperature anomalies (GTTA) are compared for the 1958−2008 period. GTTA are represented by data from satellite microwave sensing units (MSU) for the period 1980–2008 and from radiosondes (RATPAC) for 1958–2008. After the removal from the data set of short periods of temperature perturbation that relate to near-equator volcanic eruption, we use derivatives to document the presence of a 5- to 7-month delayed close relationship between SOI and GTTA. Change in SOI accounts for 72% of the variance in GTTA for the 29-year-long MSU record and 68% of the variance in GTTA for the longer 50-year RATPAC record. Because El Niño−Southern Oscillation is known to exercise a particularly strong influence in the tropics, we also compared the SOI with tropical temperature anomalies between 20°S and 20°N. The results showed that SOI accounted for 81% of the variance in tropospheric temperature anomalies in the tropics. Overall the results suggest that the Southern Oscillation exercises a consistently dominant influence on mean global temperature, with a maximum effect in the tropics, except for periods when equatorial volcanism causes ad hoc cooling. That mean global tropospheric temperature has for the last 50 years fallen and risen in close accord with the SOI of 5–7 months earlier shows the potential of natural forcing mechanisms to account for most of the temperature variation.

So once again, we are in a situation where one researcher says that humans are to blame and another says that it is all natural.

Following are selected excerpts in Farm Weekly which is the article that AccuWeather referenced:

The findings follow research released earlier this month by US scientists which shows that maximum solar activity and its aftermath have impacts on earth that resemble La Niña and El Niño events in the tropical Pacific Ocean.

In a statement to the media, lead author John McLean said that when climate modellers could not accurately determine historical temperatures “they added a ‘human influence’ to their models”.

“This paper shows that the missing component was the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO),” Mr McLean said.

---

“The IPCC acknowledges in its 4th Assessment Report that ENSO conditions cannot be predicted more than about 12 months ahead so until that situation improves projected global temperatures are likely to be quite inaccurate.”

The group says that the surge in global temperatures since 1977 can be attributed to a 1976 climate shift in the Pacific Ocean that made warming El Niño conditions more likely than they were over the previous 30 years and cooling La Niña conditions less likely.

“We have shown that internal global climate-system variability accounts for at least 70 per cent of the observed global climate variation over the past half-century,” Associate Professor de Freitas said.

Climate researchers have long been aware that ENSO events influence global temperature, for example, causing a high temperature spike in 1998 and a subsequent fall as conditions moved to La Niña.

---

Professor Bob Carter, one of four scientists who recently assisted Senator Steve Fielding in questioning the justification for the proposed Australian emissions trading scheme, says that this paper has significant consequences for public climate policy.

---

“Our paper confirms what many scientists already know: which is that no scientific justification exists for emissions regulation, and that, irrespective of the severity of the cuts proposed, an emissions trading scheme will exert no measurable effect on future climate.”

There is an article in the USAToday (that is based on an article in Nature Geoscience) that is getting a lot of web traffic lately.

While few people would call me a global warming alarmists, I do think it is important to have relatively balanced perspective on all of this.  In fact, that is the essence of this blog.

Most reputable scientists without an agenda (which likely excludes anyone associated with Al Gore) had concluded long ago that it wasn’t the CO2 concentrations that would deliver the doom and gloom of the alarmists.  Rather, the concern was a feedback loop that would be accelerated by a fairly rapid expansion of carbon dioxide.  One theory is that this CO2 increase would cause temperatures to increase slightly which causes an increase in H2O in the atmosphere which further increases the temperature in an escalating fashion.

The concern is not the CO2 increase directly but the tipping point that it trips. This is incredibly difficult to model in the computer models that we are using since we have never seen this phenomenon.  This is part of the reason that I do not trust the current state of the art of the computer models – they assume that this tripping point will be hit and we don’t know that it will.

Here are highlights from the USAToday article.

Could the best climate models — the ones used to predict global warming — all be wrong?

Maybe so, says a new study published online today in the journal Nature Geoscience.  The report found that only about half of the warming that occurred during a natural climate change 55 million years ago can be explained by excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. What caused the remainder of the warming is a mystery.

“In a nutshell, theoretical models cannot explain what we observe in the geological record,” says oceanographer Gerald Dickens, study co-author and professor of Earth Science at Rice University in Houston. “There appears to be something fundamentally wrong with the way temperature and carbon are linked in climate models.”

---

The conclusion, Dickens said, is that something other than carbon dioxide caused much of this ancient warming. “Some feedback loop or other processes that aren’t accounted for in these models — the same ones used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for current best estimates of 21st century warming — caused a substantial portion of the warming that occurred during the PETM.”

In their most recent assessment report in 2007, the IPCC predicted the Earth would warm by anywhere from 2 to 11 degrees by the end of the century due to increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere caused by human industrial activity.

Dilbert and his boss once again point out the hypocrisy of life.  In this case it is due to trying to be environmentally good.

It is hard to be good.  Sorry, Mr. Gore, but it is true.  Here are a few inconvenient facts:

1. It is very dangerous to the health of you and your children to live in a home or enter a room where a CFL (compact fluorescent) bulb has broken.  That danger is minimized if you have had the room cleaned by a hazardous waste team.  What is the problem?  Mercury.  Check out this article.
2. While Toyota and others are offering a bounty for the return of their hybrid batteries, the disposal of all those ecologically unsafe batteries is a real concern.
3. Even the ultra-rich Pickens is having a hard time “doing good” by building wind mills to power the world!

I first saw this video of Alan Carlin from the EPA over at Gore Lied.  I thought you should take a look.

I think Dr. Carlin looks pretty credible.  He is obviously not a great public speaker and he can probably count on one hand the number of times he has been interviewed on national television on one hand. He, wisely, doesn’t do a lot guessing in his interview and he even answers one question by saying that he can only report on what he was told.  Good for him – report the facts and let the conclusion grow from there.

I want to wish Mr. Carlin well – it is quite likely that this episode has injured his career and once again we see that the EPA is not really run by wise people!  Does everyone remember when the EPA was so derided that Ghostbusters even made fun of it?

Of course, Gretchen Carlson, asks the typical idiot question that she normally asks – this time stating she thinks that a law was broken.  Seriously, this woman needs to get off of national television. I was in a market that she covered earlier in her career and she was foolish then as well.  She is the reason that I rarely watch Fox and Friends.

I have talked about RealClimate.org many times in the past. In general, the gentlemen over there are pretty smart but they do tend to be one-sided in their analysis. They consistently take the side of “global warming is caused by humans” and they don’t treat others with much respect.

I started questioning their partisanship when they lashed out at the UK judge that said that “An Inconvenient Truth” was not 100% factual. They didn’t like me calling them out on that.  They then spiked some of my comments on their site when degraded scientific discussion to a challenge of who has a bigger wallet.

While the gentlemen over at RealClimate are probably fairly well educated, I tend to think that they still need to work on the wisdom aspect.  We all do silly and stupid things at times but they have the audacity of always saying they are right and everyone else is wrong.

Now Climate Depot is running a story on the little war that is going on between famed climatologist Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. and RealClimate. Marc agreed to let me run his article in full so it follows below.  You can check out the Climate Depot’s original comments here.

Climatologist slams RealClimate.org for ‘erroneously communicating the reality of the how climate system is actually behaving’ – Rebuts Myths On Sea Level, Oceans and Arctic Ice 

Tuesday, June 30, 2009  By Marc Morano  –  Climate Depot

Plus: A Climate Depot Exclusive: Real Climate Exposed! A Comprehensive Report on the “Real” RealClimate.org

The global warming promoting website RealClimate.org, is under fire yet again from a prominent scientist for presenting incorrect climate information. Climatologist Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. publicly rebuked the website in a June 30, 2009 article for “erroneously communicating the reality of the how the climate system is actually behaving.” Pielke, the former Colorado State Climatologist and currently a senior scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder, countered Real Climate’s claim that warming was “progressing faster than expected” with the latest data on sea level rise, ocean heat content and Arctic ice.

In his article titled “Real Climate’s Misinformation”, Pielke also chastised readers of Real Climate for blindly accepting the incorrect climate claims promoted on the site.

“Media and policymakers who blindly accept these claims are either naive or are deliberately slanting the science to promote their particular advocacy position,” Pielke Sr. wrote.

Realclimate.org, a website which much of the mainstream media has relied on for climate science developments, has come under increasing criticism and scrutiny from scientists. Real Climate’s lead blogger and NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt was harshly criticized for some of his scientific claims in January 2009. Atmospheric scientist Dr. Hendrik Tennekes, a prominent scientist from the Netherlands, wrote a scathing denunciation of Schmidt in which he said he was “appalled” by Schmidt’s “lack of knowledge” and added, “Back to graduate school, Gavin!”

The latest scientific woes by RealClimate.org were rebutted point by point by Pielke on June 20, 2009.

Real Climate claimed:

“Our regular readers will hardly be surprised by the key findings from physical climate science, most of which we have already discussed here. Some aspects of climate change are progressing faster than was expected a few years ago – such as rising sea levels, the increase of heat stored in the ocean and the shrinking Arctic sea ice.”

Pielke responded:

“First, what is ‘physical climate science’? How is this different from ‘climate science’. In the past, this terminology has been used when authors ignore the biological components of the climate system,” Pielke wrote.

Pielke continued: “More importantly, however, the author of the weblog makes the statement that the following climate metrics ‘are progressing faster than was expected a few years ago’”:

1. Real Climate Claim: “rising sea levels”

Pielke’s Response: “NOT TRUE; e.g. see the University of Colorado at Boulder Sea Level Change analysis. Sea level has actually flattened since 2006.”

2. Real Climate Claim: “the increase of heat stored in the ocean”

Pielke’s “Response: NOT TRUE; see
Update On A Comparison Of Upper Ocean Heat Content Changes With The GISS Model Predictions.
Their has been no statistically significant warming of the upper ocean since 2003.”

3. Real Climate Claim: “shrinking Arctic sea ice”

Pielke’s Response: “NOT TRUE; see the Northern Hemisphere Sea Ice Anomaly from the University of Illinois Cyrosphere Today website. Since 2008, the anomalies have actually decreased.”

Pielke Concluded: “These climate metrics might again start following the predictions of the models. However, until and unless they do, the authors of the Copenhagen Congress Synthesis Report and the author of the Real Climate weblog are erroneously communicating the reality of the how the climate system is actually behaving.

Media and policymakers who blindly accept these claims are either naive or are deliberately slanting the science to promote their particular advocacy position.”

Climate Depot Exclusive Report: A Long History of Accuracy Woes and Activism for RealClimate.org

Atmospheric scientist Dr. Hendrik Tennekes, a prominent scientist from the Netherlands, wrote a scathing denunciation of Schmidt in which he said he was “appalled” by Schmidt’s “lack of knowledge” and added, “Back to graduate school, Gavin!”

“Roger Pielke, Sr. has graciously invited me to add my perspective to his discussion with Gavin Schmidt at Real Climate. If this were not such a serious matter, I would have been amused by Gavin’s lack of knowledge of the differences between weather models and climate models. As it stands, I am appalled. Back to graduate school, Gavin!” Tennekes wrote on January 29, 2009. Tennekes, is an scientific pioneer in the development of numerical weather prediction and former director of research at The Netherlands’ Royal National Meteorological Institute, and an internationally recognized expert in atmospheric boundary layer processes. Tennekes is also featured in U.S. Senate Minority Report Update: More Than 700 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims “Gavin Schmidt is not the only meteorologist with an inadequate grasp of the role of the oceans in the climate system. In my weblog of June 24, 2008, I addressed the limited perception that at least one other climate modeler appears to have,” Tennekes wrote. “From my perspective it is not a little bit alarming that the current generation of climate models cannot simulate such fundamental phenomena as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. I will not trust any climate model until and unless it can accurately represent the PDO and other slow features of the world ocean circulation. Even then, I would remain skeptical about the potential predictive skill of such a model many tens of years into the future,” Tennekes added.

Atmospheric Physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh, also critiqued RealClimate.org on June 24, 2008. Peden wrote, “’Real Climate’ is a staged and contracted production, which wasn’t created by ’scientists,’ it was actually created by Environmental Media Services, a company which specializes in spreading environmental junk science on behalf of numerous clients who stand to financially benefit from scare tactics through environmental fear mongering.”

Meteorologist Joe D’Aleo also launched a sharply worded critique of RealClimate.org in January 2009 titled “Response to Gavin Schmidt – Global Data Base Issues Are Real.” “To Gavin [Schmidt] and the other alarmists, it appears, a piece that is fair and balanced can make no mention of any other opinion except that carbon dioxide is causing global warming and action is needed now and will deliver gain and no pain, something the one sided media coverage has gotten them used to over the years,” D’Aleo wrote on January 13, 2009. D’Aleo served as the first Director of Meteorology at The Weather Channel and served as chairman of the American Meteorological Society’s Committee on Weather Analysis and Forecasting.

Israeli Astrophysicist Nir Shaviv has also been critical. “The aim of RealClimate.org is not to engage a sincere scientific debate. Their aim is to post a reply full of a straw man so their supporters can claim that your point ‘has been refuted by real scientists at RealClimate.org,’” Shaviv’s website reported. Shaviv, who calls the website “Wishfulclimate.org,” noted that the “writers (at RealClimaet.org) try again and again to concoct what appears to be deep critiques against skeptic arguments, but end up doing a very shallow job. All in the name of saving the world. How gallant of them.”

More Real Scientists Rebuke Real Climate:

‘Scientist adjusts data — presto, Antarctic cooling disappears’ – December 21, 2008
Excerpt: The analysis concluded, “Looks like [study author] Steig ‘got rid of’ Antarctic cooling the same way [Michael] Mann got rid of medieval warming. Why not just look at the station data instead of ‘adjusting’ it (graph above)? It shows a 50-year cooling trend,” the analysis concluded.

Pielke Jr.: ‘Gavin Schmidt admits to stealing a scientific idea from his arch-nemesis, Steve McIntyre’ – February 4, 2009 – Excerpt: This is not a hypothetical example, but a caricature of real goings on with our friends over at Real Climate … Due to an inadvertent release of information, NASA’s Gavin Schmidt (a “real scientist” of the Real Climate blog) admits to stealing a scientific idea from his arch-nemesis, Steve McIntyre (not a “real scientist” of the Climate Audit blog) and then representing it as his own idea, and getting credit for it. In his explanation why this is OK, Gavin explains that he did some work on his own after getting the idea from Steve’s blog, and so it was OK to take full credit for the idea. [...] Gavin’s outing is remarkable because it shows him not only stealing an idea, but stealing from someone who he and his colleagues routinely criticize as being wrong, corrupt, and a fraud. Does anyone wonder why skepticism flourishes? When evaluations of expertise hinge on trust, stealing someone’s ideas and taking credit for them does not help.

Gavin Schmidt’s Antics Prompts Laughter From Scientist ‘“How am I supposed to get any work done when I am laughing so hard?” – Feb. 2009 – Excerpt: Reaction By Climate researcher Dr. Craig Loehle, formerly of the department of Energy Laboratories and currently with the National Council for Air and Stream Improvements, who has published more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers.

‘Is Gavin Schmidt The Best Thing Ever Happened To AGW Skeptics?’

Gavin’s “Mystery Man” Revealed – by Climate Audit’s Steve McIntyre on February 4th, 2009 –Gavin Schmidt demands Pielke Jr. Pull Critical Blog

Real Climate’s Schmidt ‘anti-science exposed’ ‘Using an image of Lake Powell to indicate anything about climate change is perverse’ – June 4, 2009 – Excerpt: As with so many other products generated by the AGW industry, Schmidt’s book Climate Change: Picturing the Science is part of an ongoing effort to frighten the credulous. Its messages include: weather will kill you; our moment on Earth is unique; and climate did not used to change. Had you wanted to fulfill the responsibilities of an objective and hard-hitting journalist, you might have asked Schmidt about the image of Lake Powell on his book’s cover. [...] Were you aware, may I ask, of the controversial nature of the damming of the Colorado River that led to Lake Powell? Environmentalists were and are appalled by this particular dam. It has changed an important piece of the American natural landscape. [...] Group-think has affected many societies negatively, and it has not disappeared during our own time. The fact that neither Mr. Schmidt’s editor, nor his publisher, nor you, nor the photographer, nor Mr. Schmidt himself would stop to reflect on the oddity of this cover is enough to give one pause.

Schmidt issues ‘Correction and apology’ for incorrectly claiming permafrost melt was cause of collapse – June 2, 2009 – Excerpt: the cause of the collapse was the 1964 Earthquake rather than permafrost melt. We take complete responsibility for the mix-up in captioning and the erroneous attribution and we’d like to fully apologize.

AP reporter Borenstein calls out ‘Real Climate’ activists’ Mann and Schmidt for ‘misrepresenting interviews he did with each of them’- June 15, 2009

Real Climate touted Steig et al ‘Antarctica is warming’ study ‘falsified’ – May 29, 2009
Excerpt: After reading this latest statistical analysis, I think it is fair to conclude that the paper’s premise has been falsified. [...] It is my view that all Steig and Michael Mann have done with their application of RegEm to the station data is to smear the temperature around much like an artist would smear red and white paint on a pallete board to get a new color “pink” and then paint the entire continent with it. It is a lot like “spin art” you see at the county fair.

Scientists, Data Challenge Real Climate Touted Antarctic ‘Warming’ Study – ‘It is hard to make data where none exist’ – January 21, 2009

Schmidt Admits Defeat in Climate Debate! Tough New York City crowd reverses view on man-made warming and converts to skepticism following debate featuring RealClimate.org’s Schmidt– March 2007

RealClimate.org’s Michael Mann incorrectly Cites Mt. Kilimanjaro as evidence of man-made global warming – Providence Journal – September 25, 2008

Reality Check: Mann’s using years old Mt. Kilimanjaro talking points. Mann’s “facts” on Kilimanjaro are outdated.

UK Spectator: ‘Hysterical’ Real Climate’s Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick ‘most discredited study in history of Science – February 7, 2009 – By Melanie Phillips

Pielke Jr.: Details RealClimate.org’s & Others Engage in ‘Character Assassination’ of Skeptical Scientists’

Real Climate ‘has clearly aligned itself squarely with one political position on climate change’ – January 14, 2005 – Excerpt: The site’s focus has been exclusively on attacking those who invoke science as the basis for their opposition to action on climate change, folks such as George Will, Senator James Inhofe, Michael Crichton, McIntyre and McKitrick, Fox News, and Myron Ebell. Whether intended or not, the site has clearly aligned itself squarely with one political position on climate change.

Real Climate’s Schmidt attempts to ‘explain why skeptics are simplistic’ – June 1, 2009

Not again! Antarctic ‘warming’ author Steig claims Steve McIntyre has accused him of ‘thinly-veiled accusations of scientific fraud’ – June 3, 2009

Perhaps a Complex? Real Climate’s Steig claimed Morano ‘accuses him of scientific fraud’- Morano Responds – January 29, 2009

History of Real Cilmate’s activism and funding – Newsbusters.org – June 28, 2008

UN IPCC Scientist Richard Courtney Rips Real Climate Touted Antarctic Study – January 29, 2009
Excerpt: I am not surprised at Steig’s behaviour that attempts to deflect attention from his paper and its content. I have written a letter to Nature complaining that Steig’s paper contains a flaw so severe that Steig’s paper should not have been published, and I suspect that others have written complaints to Nature concerning other errors in that paper, too.

Funny title.  You may have to read it a couple times to get it.  I didn’t create it – I am not that creative.

Kim Strassel has an opinion in the Wall Street Journal where she does a fair amount of reporting on the difficulties that politicians are having in dealing with the coming global warming catastrophe. It seems that politicians are a lot like many of my readers, when scientists can’t agree on what is happening (and not just little disagreements but violently opposed to each other) one should probably wait to spend trillions of dollars on which side is correct.

Here are some highlights from Ms. Strassel’s article:

Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as “deniers.” The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

---

…New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country’s weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

---

…Joanne Simpson, the world’s first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak “frankly” of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming “the worst scientific scandal in history.” Norway’s Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the “new religion.” A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton’s Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists’ open letter.)

---

Credit for Australia’s own era of renewed enlightenment goes to Dr. Ian Plimer, a well-known Australian geologist. Earlier this year he published “Heaven and Earth,” a damning critique of the “evidence” underpinning man-made global warming.

---

Mr. Fielding, a crucial vote on the bill, was so alarmed by the renewed science debate that he made a fact-finding trip to the U.S., attending the Heartland Institute’s annual conference for climate skeptics. He also visited with Joseph Aldy, Mr. Obama’s special assistant on energy and the environment, where he challenged the Obama team to address his doubts. They apparently didn’t.

This week Mr. Fielding issued a statement: He would not be voting for the bill. He would not risk job losses on “unconvincing green science.” The bill is set to founder as the Australian parliament breaks for the winter.

Other articles in the blogosphere that you may be interested in:

Will Australia Settle The Global Warming Debate?

Businesses must move quickly to exploit “perfect green storm”

The Global Warming Hoax and the Crazy Left Agenda 

Tell Your Representative to Sink the Bad Idea Known as Waxman-Markey 

Australia set to nix its own version of Cap & Trade 

Australia and Global Warming

I have had a few posts on the recent report from the US Administration regarding global warming. My posts all reference the great work of other bloggers on the subject. This post will be no different.

Steve McIntyre builds on the work of Climate Skeptic in digging into the utility industry and the vast increases in outages that they are suffering through due to the rampant bad weather that we are enjoying due to global warming.

Obviously, the above paragraph is meant to be satirical. I do this because Steve starts his post by being satirical and combining the report with Colin Powell and his UN testimony regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Several of his readers correctly chastise Steve in the comments for doing this.  When you read his article, skip the first paragraph or two where Steve is trying to be funny.  The article doesn’t need this distraction to be relevant. Frankly, there is a reason that Steve is blogger on the climate and not writer for David Letterman!

The article is quite long and an enjoyable read.  I really cannot do it justice to even reprint part of it here.  Go over and read it.  It points out that you must question “peer reviewed” work when the reviewers is also the author!  If I “reviewed” my own work on this site, my analysis would, of course, be “amazingly brilliant” but based on some of the hundreds of comments that I have received over time, others don’t always see my “brilliance”.  Similarly, you should not believe a scientist that says he is “amazingly smart”.

I do leave you with one quote from the article that I think is relevant and it is the last paragraph:

When I was asked about the moral, if any, of the Mann hockey stick debacle, I regularly commented that Assessment reports should not rely on authors to assess their own work – that’s an invitation for problems. Unfortunately, that advice – given in a constructive and not adversarial way- has been ignored and the present CCSP report provides a particularly vivid example.

I am going to continue to let Climate Skeptic keep up the good work on the latest report from the US Administration regarding the dire circumstances of global warming. He has posted again on the subject and has even done a follow-on to the worry the increased storm activity is upsetting the electrical grid (post number 4 on the subject).

I will quote a few things that I thought were interesting:

He said that there may be an underlying upward trend out there (particularly in thunderstorms) but that most of the increase in this chart is from improvements in data gathering.  In 1997, the EIA (and Makins himself) took over the compilation of this data, which had previously been haphazard, and made a big push to get all utilities to report as required.  They made a second change and push for reporting in 2001, and again in 2007/2008.  He told me that most of this slope is due to better reporting, and not necessarily any underlying trend.   In fact, he said there still is some under-reporting by smaller utilities he wants to improve so that the graph will likely go higher in the future.

---

At the end of the day, this disturbance data is not a good proxy for severe weather.  And I am left wondering at this whole “peer-reviewed science” thing, where errors like this pass into publication of major reports — an error that an amateur like myself can identify with one phone call to the guy listed by this data set on the web site.  Forget peer review, this isn’t even good basic editorial control  (apparently no one who compiled the report called Makins, and he was surprised today at the number of calls he was suddenly getting).

global+warming, Climate Skeptic, storms, electrical utilities

Regular readers know that I think that nuclear power is one of the very few ways we can provide the power we need without taking the chance that global warming is caused by carbon dioxide.  If you believe in anthropogenic global warming and don’t believe the human race should live like the Amish, then you really don’t have a choice but to endorse nuclear power.

Contrary to my custom, I will be recreating the complete story here.

Strickland details plans for nuclear plant
Business First of Columbus – by Matt Burns

A third nuclear power station proposed for Ohio likely won’t start operating for years, but government officials and energy industry executives are saying it is time to start considering its construction and Piketon is the place for it.

Politicians and executives from companies and organizations involved in the proposed multibillion-dollar project unveiled plans Thursday for an alliance that will push for development of the power station in southern Ohio. Officials said the project, if approved, would take more than a decade to complete. The initiative would create an estimated 3,000 jobs during construction and up to 700 jobs to operate the facility, provided regulators give it the OK.

With a long approval and construction road ahead and government plans for toughening emissions regulations, Gov. Ted Strickland said Ohio – the fifth-largest electricity consumer in the nation – must take planning steps now.

“We cannot wait to begin building our new energy future,” he said at the gathering in Piketon, about 60 miles south of Columbus.

Working on the Southern Ohio Clean Energy Park Alliance are Duke Energy Corp. (NYSE:DUK); French nuclear power company Areva SA; Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative; nuclear developer UniStar Nuclear Energy LLC; and USEC Inc. (NYSE:USU).

The 3,700-acre site for the plant was home to a 900-worker uranium enrichment complex that ceased operations in 2001. The government created the complex in 1954 to make uranium to fuel military reactors and for nuclear weapons.

Bethesda, Md.-based USEC, which ran the shuttered Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, has maintained a presence there with about 1,200 workers. A recently licensed American Centrifuge Plant, which will create fuel for nuclear power operations, is set to go online there in 2011, USEC told Columbus Business First.

Duke Energy executives and state officials are billing the plant as a key step in moving the state away from a dependence on coal-fired electricity, which is the source of more than 85 percent of Ohio’s electricity. The state is home to two nuclear plants in the north.

“It’s an indisputable fact that the nation and the planet are transitioning to a low-carbon future,” Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers said Thursday. “With the creation of this clean-energy park, we’re preparing to cross the bridge to that low-carbon future.”

Piketon is viewed as a strong site for the proposed plant because of its infrastructure. Strickland said in a phone interview after Thursday’s announcement that the infrastructure advantage, combined with the alliance’s past experience in nuclear development, could even move the project quicker than the average nuclear plant.

Strickland said the alliance is seeking U.S. Energy Department funding for the project’s first phase, which would include permitting. Charlotte, N.C.-based Duke Energy would manage and oversee the project and apply for federal licensing. Duke Energy and Areva would shoulder the bulk of the project’s cost, he said, which is estimated at more than $5 billion.

U.S. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, acknowledged the dark side of the former Gaseous Diffusion Plant. The government has paid out about $325 million to workers who became ill as a result of their jobs there and it has contributed about $41 million toward medical bills, he said.

Strickland said he’s confident the industry has made performance and environmental strides that likely will eliminate any “broad-based objection” to the project.

“I believe we now are wiser, the standards are tougher and that the industry has become safer,” he said.

nuclear, global+warming, Ohio, carbon dioxide, CO2