Reminder: November 10 Phoenix Climate Presentation

via: climate-skeptic

I am making this reminder in honor of Blog Action Day for Climate.

I would like to invite all of you in the Phoenix area to my climate presentation on November 10, 2009. The presentation is timed to coincide with the Copenhagen climate negotiations as Ill as debate on the Boxer cap-and-trade bill in the US Senate.

Despite the explosion of media stories on climate, it is difficult for the average person to really get a handle on the science of greenhouse gasses and climate change in the simplistic and often incomplete or even incorrect popular accounts. This presentation, which is free to the public, will focus on the science of climate change, including:

• Why greenhouse gasses like CO2 warm the Earth.
• How most forecasts of warming from manmade causes are grossly exaggerated, which helps to explain why actual temperatures are undershooting warming forecasts
• How natural processes lead to climate variations that are being falsely interpreted as man-made.
• A discussion of public policy initiatives, and the presentation of a much lower-cost alternative to current cap-and-trade bills
• A review of the role of amateurs in weather and climate measurement, and how the average person can get involved

I have a degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Princeton University and a masters degree from Harvard. Most of his training is in control theory and the forecasting of complex dynamic systems, which turn out to be the key failure points in most catastrophic climate forecasts. My mission over the last few years both at this web site and my lectures and debates has been to teach the science of global warming in ways that are accessible to the general public.

Over the years I have preferred a debate format, as for example in my debate with Joe Nation, the author of California’s cap-and-trade law. Unfortunately, the most alarmist proponents of catastrophic manmade global warming have taken Al Gore’s lead and refuse to participate in public debates on the topic. As a result, I will do my best to be fair in presenting the global warming case, and then show which portions are really “settled science” and which portions are exaggerated. You are encouraged to check out Climate-Skeptic.com to see the type of issues I take on – there are links to past presentations, blog posts, books, and even a series of popular and highly-rated YouTube videos.

Below you will also find an example of the types of issues I will discuss. There are many, many folks out there on both sides of this issue whose writing and presentations amount to little more than fevered finger-pointing – I work hard to avoid this type rhetoric and focus on the science.

The presentation will be at 7PM November 10 in the auditorium of the Phoenix Country Day School, just north of Camelback on 40th Street, and is free to the public (this event is paid for me personally and is not sponsored or paid for by any group). The presentation will be about an hour long with another hour for questions and discussion. Folks on all sides of these issues are encouraged to attend and participate in civil discussion of the issues.

If you are interested, please join the mailing list for this presentation to receive reminders and updates:

Sign up for email updates on Phoenix climate presentation

Czech President Vaclav Klaus Attacks Al Gore

Just last month Al Gore told a German crowd at the opening of a dinosaur park that the polar ice cap would disappear in 5 YEARS!

[If you have the nerve, watch the idiocy of Al Gore]

Well, Czech President Vaclav Klaus isn’t buying Gore’s hype.
Maybe because this year looks like it could be the coldest year in recorded history.
Breitbart reported:

Czech President Vaclav Klaus took aim at climate change campaigner Al Gore on Saturday in Davos in a frontal attack on the science of global warming.
“I don’t think that there is any global warming,” said the 67-year-old liberal, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the European Union. “I don’t see the statistical data for that.”

Referring to the former US vice president, who attended Davos this year, he added: “I’m very sorry that some people like Al Gore are not ready to listen to the competing theories. I do listen to them.

“Environmentalism and the global warming alarmism is challenging our freedom. Al Gore is an important person in this movement.”

Speaking on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, he said that he was more worried about the reaction to the perceived dangers than the consequences.

“I’m afraid that the current crisis will be misused for radically constraining the functioning of the markets and market economy all around the world,” he said.

Someone needs to nominate Klaus for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Found on Gateway Pundit

Congress turns up the BS meter

ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT: Senate calls for more Gore

Tom LoBianco (Contact)
Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Senate calls for more Gore

Former Vice President Al Gore returns to Capitol Hill Wednesday to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Sen. John Kerry, who chairs the committee, had kind words for his fellow former Democratic presidential nominee: “Al Gore has been sounding the alarm on climate change for over three decades, and he understands the urgent need for American engagement and leadership on this issue.”

Mr. Gore, who has opted to stay in private life rather than return with the Democratic administration, still has easy access with President Obama’s team.

Shortly before taking office, Mr. Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. held a closed-door meeting with Mr. Gore to discuss climate change and national energy priorities.

Source – Washington Slimes

Japanese Physicist: ‘Recent Warming Natural and Not Manmade’

Physicist Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu, the former director of both University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute and International Arctic Research Center who has twice been named in “1000 Most Cited Scientists,” released a scientific study of the Arctic on March 2007 that concluded the recent warming was likely “natural” and not manmade.Akasofu, an award winning scientist who has published more than 550 professional journal articles and authored or co-authored 10 books, also recently blasted the UN IPCC process. “I think the initial motivation by the IPCC (established in 1988) was good; it was an attempt to promote this particular scientific field,” Akasofu said in an April 1, 2007 interview.

“But so many [scientists] jumped in, and the media is looking for a disaster story, and the whole thing got out of control,” Akasofu added. The article continued: “Akasofu said there is no data showing that ‘most’ of the present warming is due to the man-made greenhouse effect, as the members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change wrote in February. “If you look back far enough, we have a bunch of data that show that warming has gone on from the 1600s with an almost linear increase to the present,” Akasofu said.

The article concluded: “Akasofu said scientists who support the man-made greenhouse gas theory disregard information from centuries ago when exploring the issue of global warming. Satellite images of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean have been available in the satellite era only since the 1960s and 1970s. ‘Young researchers are interested in satellite data, which became available after 1975,’ he said. ‘All the papers since (the advent of satellites) show warming. That’s what I call ‘instant climatology.’ I’m trying to tell young scientists, ‘You can’t study climatology unless you look at a much longer time period.’”

Found on GlobalWarmingSkeptic

The Flight 1549 blame game (updated)

It didn’t take long for the warmists to blame the US Airways crash on global warming, which is, after all, deemed responsible for anything bad. Time Magazine, which was once widely read, sprang into action:

While officials use radar and radio collars to track bird populations, habitat destruction and climate change have disrupted migratory patterns. Moreover, the populations of certain species of birds are increasing at rapid rates, thanks to changes in food supply. The Canada-goose population, for example, has grown 7.3% annually from 1980 to 2006. [emphasis added] Read the full story »

Environmental Angst

As environmentalism continues to grow in prominence, more and more of us are trying to live a “greener” lifestyle. But the more “eco-friendly” you try to become, the more likely you find yourself confused and frustrated by the green message.Have you tried giving up your bright and cheery incandescent light bulbs to save energy only to learn that their gloomy-but-efficient compact fluorescent replacements contain mercury? Perhaps you’ve tried to free up space in landfills by foregoing the ease and convenience of disposable diapers only to be criticized for the huge quantities of energy and water consumed in laundering those nasty cloth diapers. Even voicing support for renewable energy no longer seems to be green enough, as angry environmentalists protest the development of “pristine lands” for wind farms and solar power plants.

Why is it that no matter what sacrifices you make to try to reduce your “environmental footprint,” it never seems to be enough? Well, consider why it is that you have an “environmental footprint” in the first place.

Germany having ‘one of the coldest winters in 100 years’

The cold has so far cost four people their lives and caused even the Muritzsee [a large lake] to freeze up.

One of the coldest winters in 100 years has cost Germany more lives. At minus 16 degrees a homeless man in Rhineland-Palatinate froze to death. Police said yersterday that the 58-year-old had for two years lived with a 43-year-old in a tent.

On Friday morning, a 53-year old Berliner was fished out dead from a hole in the ice in the Elde in Grabow (District Ludwigslust). According to the police at directorate Schwerin, the man’s car was found with the key still in the ignition on the bridge of the federal 5th

In Nidda a man who lived in a nursing home became a victim of the cold, according to the police in Friedberg. The corpse of a man who on Sunday ran away from home, was found on Monday. Only now it has been established that he froze to death. On Monday in Weimar a demented 77 – year-old who had got lost froze to death…..

According to the German Weather Service (DWD), this is one of the coldest winters of the past 100 years. It is quite rare that such low temperatures as in the past days were recorded, the DWD meteorologist Thomas Schmidt said yesterday. The weather service Meteomedia reported yesterday a temperature of minus 34.6 degrees at the Funtensee in the Bavarian Alps. It was there in Christmas 2001, that the lowest temperature so far in Germany was recorded — at minus 45.9 degrees Celsius, .

For the first time in years the Mueritz lake in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania — with 11,700 hectares of Germany’s largest lake scenery — was again completely covered with ice. In northern Germany ice increasingly hampered inland ship movements: The Elbe was from Friday morning closed to shipping above Hamburg because of a thick blanket of ice.

IPCC criticism of the week

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) officially released its Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) in 2007. This document is often regarded as the definitive word on the science behind global warming. However, AR4 gives a distorted, misleading, and often erroneous picture. Examples of these distortions will be listed here each week, with attention focused on the Working Group 1 Report “The Physical Science Basis” (WG1), and in particular its Summary for Policymakers (SPM).

1 August 2008: How the IPCC invented a new calculus. The IPCC authors invented a new way of measuring the slope of a graph, in order to create the false impression that global warming is accelerating.

8 August 2008: The table that didn’t add up. The WG1 SPM was approved by the IPCC even though it contained a table with arithmetic errors. The table was quietly corrected with no admission of the error. Continue reading . . .

Can you have a consensus if no one agrees what the consensus is?

Over at the Blackboard, Lucia has a post with a growing set of comments about anthropogenic warming and the tropical, mid-tropospheric hotspot.  Unlike many who are commenting on the topic, I have actually read most of the IPCC AR4 (painful as that was), and came to the same conclusion as Lucia:  that the IPCC said the climate models predicted a hot spot in the mid-troposphere, and that this hot spot was a unique fingerprint of global warming (”fingerprint” being a particularly popular word among climate scientists).  Quoting Lucia:

I have circled the plates illustrating the results for well mixed GHG’s and those for all sources of warming combined. As you see, according to the AR4– a consensus document written for the UN’s IPCC and published in 2007 — models predict the effect of GHG’s as distinctly different from that of solar or volcanic forcings. In particular: The tropical tropospheric hotspots appears in the plate discussing heating by GHG’s and does not appear when the warming results from other causes.

LINK WITH CHARTS

Research Reveals Environmental Impact of Google Searches

Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.

While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2. Boiling a kettle generates about 15g.

“Google operates huge data centers around the world that consume a great deal of power,” said Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist whose research on the environmental impact of computing is due out soon. “A Google search has a definite environmental impact.”

Google is secretive about its energy consumption and carbon footprint. It also refuses to divulge the locations of its data centers. However, with more than 200m internet searches estimated globally daily, the electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions caused by computers and the internet is provoking concern. A recent report by Gartner, the industry analysts, said the global IT industry generated as much greenhouse gas as the world’s airlines – about 2% of global CO2 emissions.