U.S. February figures reinforce recent cooling trend

The original warming scare was based on a trend that was observed for only about 20 years in the second half of the 20th century. The figures below show that there has now been a COOLING trend over a similar time-period: "The trend for 1990 to 2012 is - 1.27 F / Decade". So, using Warmist logic, we should all now be shrieking about the dangers of freezing to death! -- JR

The official February temperature figures are out. As usual I thought it would be interesting to look at the recent February US temperature from a “historic” perspective. To see how the decade trends have evolved during the last 112 years.

Especially to see how the decade trends have evolved during the last 42 years. The period that according to the Global Warming Hysterics and computer models they worship should show a steady and accelerated increase in temperature.

And as I always point out:

Remember, these are the official figures. With the poor placement of stations (91 % of the stations are CRN 3 to 5 = bad to very poor); where they have purposely taken away the urban heat island effect, use huge smoothing radius, the historical “adjustment and tweaking” to cool the past etc.

Not to mention the great slaughter of GHCN stations 1990-1993 – roughly 63 % of all stations were “dropped”. Oddly enough many of them in cold places – Hmmm? Now the number of GHCN stations is back at the same numbers as in 1890.

Also remember that the US stations are now nearly a third of the all GHCN world stations.

US temperature February 1990-2012

The trend for 1990 to 2012 is - 1.27 F / Decade

US temperature February 2000-2012

The trend for 2000 to 2012 is - 1.63 F / Decade

And as I said in the beginning – always remember that these figures are based on the official data that has been tweaked, “adjusted” and manipulated to fit their agenda (cool the past, ignore UHI and land use change factors, huge smoothing radius – 1200km etc.)..

So the “warming trend” 2000-2012 for February is exactly - 1.63 F degrees a decade. That is a - 16.3 F COOLER in 100 years. That’s what I call “warming”!

Noticing the “accelerated warming” trend??

And to REALLY show you this “accelerated warming” trend lets recapitulate the last three months and their trend /decade (see my previous posts):

US temperature December 2000-2011

The trend for 2000 to 2011 is - 0.86 F / Decade

US temperature January 2000-2012

The trend for 2000 to 2012 is - 1.18 F / Decade

US temperature February 2000-2012

The trend for 2000 to 2012 is - 1.63 F / Decade

You REALLY, REALLY can see the accelerating trend can you not?

Take cover – The sweat is really breaking out.

According to the computer models that the Global Warming Hysterics love so much, worship and blindly follows (especially our intelligent politicians), it should be EXACTLY the opposite.

And we are supposed to be very worried about a predicted rise of 3-4 F? But not this ACTUAL trend?

More HERE (See the original for links, graphics etc.)




More Warmist psychologizing

For a Warmist, anything is better than looking at actual temperature data!

Liberal foundations (there are several prominent ones) that fund efforts here in the United States to make sure climate change is properly reported, and to have rapid response in place to rebut arguments from climate skeptics -- they all live in their heads. Their approach is rational. They underappreciate the fact that the issue at hand is emotional and visceral.

Conservative attack dogs understand this. They have no hesitation going for the jugular, or playing to our most primordial instincts and fears. The liberal elite, meanwhile, continue to try to influence policy and public opinion by citing science, by correcting factual mistakes and by engaging in "substantive debate."

They will never win, because they are not only playing by the wrong rules, they are playing the wrong game.

Prompting action on climate change requires open warfare. Gloves off. If there are rules, they are street rules, i.e. logic is out the window. On the street, it is all about protecting your people.

The idea that accurate reporting will change the way anyone thinks or acts on Capitol Hill is ridiculous. It's like planting a seed in Death Valley and expecting it to miraculously sprout into a beautiful carbon-mitigating flower. Not going to happen.

New research from the National Survey of American Public Opinion on Climate Change backs that up: Almost 4 in 10 Americans still don't believe in man-made climate change (and that's actually an improvement from 50 percent in 2010). Additional research by Third Way, a moderate Washington think tank, unveils an alternative to focusing messaging on global warming, and this alternative is rooted in the idea of talking about the benefits of arresting climate change.

As any good marketer knows, when you're selling something, you're selling the personal benefits, not the product itself. In the same sense with climate change, we need to sell the benefits of stopping man-made climate change.

Recent focus groups conducted in Ohio and North Carolina by Third Way confirm this approach. Besides concluding that "voters in traditional energy states want to get America running on clean energy," their findings -- Moving Clean Energy to the Center: Insights from Swing Voters in the Midwest and South -- reached three other important conclusions:

* Focusing on long-term economic growth potential and the consequences of inaction works. Selling near-term job creation doesn't.

* Tapping into concerns about pollution and the strong desire to eliminate coal works. Focusing simply on climate change doesn't.
Describing a vision of government as a facilitator for the private sector works. Direct spending by government doesn't.

As the California campaign against Proposition 23 last year proved, concern about public health because of pollution made a huge difference in defeating the proposition, which aimed to cancel the state's nation-leading and progressive climate policy.

More HERE





Why Early Earth Didn't Freeze Over Still a Mystery

A "consensus" crumbles: No sign of a CO2-induced warming effect billions of years ago. Maybe something like a Greenhouse Effect exists somewhere in the universe. But it has yet to be found on earth

Global warming gases cannot explain why Earth was not frozen billions of years ago when the sun was cooler, researchers say.

In the Archean Eon about 2.5 billion to 4 billion years ago, before the first advanced life appeared on the planet, the sun was only about 70 percent as bright as it is today. This means the amount of heat felt on Earth was much less, and Earth's surface should have been frozen.

However, ancient rocks at Isua near the southwest coast of Greenland indicate liquid water and even life was present on Earth about 3.8 billion years ago. "So Earth's climate had to be somewhere between the freezing point and boiling point of water, and probably pretty close to the temperature we have today, which sustains life," said researcher Emily Pope, an isotope geochemist at the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen.

The contradiction between the cold Earth that apparently should have existed and the temperate Earth that apparently did exist is known as the "faint young sun paradox." Until now, the most popular explanation for this enigma was that there was a higher concentration of "greenhouse gases" such as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than today. These gases absorb heat from the sun, helping warm the planet.

"Just like the average temperature of Earth is getting higher today because there are more greenhouse gases than there were before the Industrial Revolution, or even before the invention of agriculture, the presence of high concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane should have kept the early Earth warm," Pope said.

For greenhouse gases to explain the faint young sun paradox, their concentrations would need to have been extremely high, hundreds to thousands of times as much as today.

"If levels of carbon dioxide were that high, they would be recorded in ancient soils and sediments in the rock record," Pope said. "If levels of methane were that high, they would actually form a kind of organic haze in the atmosphere that blocks the sun's rays and would counteract its properties as a greenhouse gas."

Now scientists analyzing relatively pristine 3.8-billion-year-old rocks from Isua find no evidence that greenhouse gas levels were high enough to explain the faint young sun paradox, further deepening the mystery, Pope told LiveScience.

Specifically, researchers looked at serpentine mineral deposits, which form when ancient seawater interacts with deep ocean crust (the outer layer of Earth). These deposits record details of the water such as the hydrogen and oxygen isotope ratios found within, which rely in part on ocean size. Isotopes are atoms of the same element, like hydrogen, with differing numbers of neutrons. Light hydrogen isotopes are more likely to be found in the air and escape into space than heavier ones; the smaller the oceans, the more their waters will have slightly lower concentrations of light isotopes.

The rocks suggest that the oceans were up to 26 percent larger in the past. These shrunk over time to present-day volumes — seawater became trapped in newly formed continental rocks, and hydrogen that is one of the key ingredients of water instead escaped to outer space.

The rate of hydrogen loss to space is linked to atmospheric levels of methane and carbon dioxide; both these greenhouse gases can interact with hydrogen and other gases such as oxygen in complex ways. The hydrogen loss rate the researchers estimated based on these findings suggests that concentrations of these greenhouse gases were nowhere near high enough to reconcile the faint young sun paradox.

"We have new concrete data that characterizes the early oceans," Pope said. "This will hugely help our ability to put realistic constraints on our models of how Earth's oceans and atmosphere first evolved."

An alternative explanation for the faint young sun paradox is that early in Earth history, there were fewer continents because a number had not formed yet; less land mass would have meant less cloud cover, because there weren't biologically generated particles such as pollen and spores that could behave as seeds around which the clouds could form.

"The result was that the planet, covered mostly by oceans, was darker, and like an asphalt road on a hot day, could absorb a lot more heat, enough to keep the Earth clement," Pope told LiveScience.

The scientists detailed their findings online March 5 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

SOURCE





£120 billion gamble on wind turbines in Britain: Green energy 'ten times dearer than power stations'

A rush to green energy by spending billions covering much of the countryside with wind turbines would be an expensive blunder, a damning study has found.

Professor Gordon Hughes of Edinburgh University said the massive programme will cost consumers £120billion by 2020 through higher bills.

This is almost ten times more than the £13billion it would cost to generate the same amount of electricity from efficient gas-fired power stations, according to the leading energy and environment economist.

Supporters of wind power insist the key benefit is that it allows a huge reduction in CO2 emissions, in line with EU obligations.

This is challenged in the study, which suggests the switch to wind will actually deliver only a tiny reduction.

The report is published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think-tank devoted to challenging conventional wisdom about climate change. GWPF’s chairman is the former Tory Chancellor Lord Lawson and its findings are backed by Lib Dem peer Emma Nicholson.

Professor Hughes said families are being forced to subsidise wind farms through their bills. Meanwhile business energy costs are also being driven up, so harming their profits and ability to invest and grow.

By contrast around a dozen landowners who allow wind farms to be erected on their property are to share an £850million subsidy windfall. A wind turbine generating £150,000 of electricity a year is eligible for ‘monstrous subsidies’ of £250,000 a year.

Professor Hughes warned: ‘Unless the Government scales back its commitments to wind power very substantially, its policy will be worse than a mistake, it will be a blunder.’

Wind farm support stems from a pledge in the 2008 Climate Change Act for a 34 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions. However, Professor Hughes insists figures show opting for wind power rather than building efficient gas-fired power stations will – at best – reduce emissions by 2.8 per cent.

He said the figure is so low because any investment in wind farms will have to be backed up with the building of gas turbine power stations to ensure the lights stay on when there is no wind.

Professor Hughes said: ‘There is nothing inherently good or bad about investing in renewable energy and green technology. The key problems with current policies for wind power are simple. They require a huge commitment of investment to a technology that is not very green but which is very expensive and inflexible.’

Baroness Nicholson joined the attack, saying: ‘A dozen of the biggest landowners will between them receive almost £850million in subsidies, a huge amount paid by ordinary families through hidden taxes on their electricity bills. ‘I am immensely unhappy wind power has attracted such monstrous subsidies. I am particularly unhappy because the facts have been hidden from the consumer who will have to pay the bill for this folly.’

A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said developing wind power will mean the UK is less reliant on imported gas. She said: ‘We need investment in new energy capacity. Wind will be a crucial part of that, alongside gas, new nuclear and carbon capture and storage.

‘Home grown renewables will help insulate our economy and consumers from depending excessively on gas imports.’

SOURCE





Wind power companies lose luster with investors

Surprisingly enough!

The weather's getting worse for wind-power companies, which are finding it increasingly difficult to attract venture backers.

U.S. investments in turbine farms and wind-energy businesses tumbled 38 percent last year to $9.7 billion, according to data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Venture capitalists have practically left the sector altogether. They invested only $177.6 million in wind startups last year, down 71 percent from the year before.

Wind power is bucking a broader trend for clean energy, which is seeing a surge of investment. Venture backers pumped $4.29 billion into the sector in 2011, up 13 percent from the previous year, according to the National Venture Capital Association. With wind, it's harder for early investors to afford the large outlay of cash needed to get a business off the ground, said Jason Matlof, a partner at Battery Ventures in Menlo Park.

"We can't compete as venture investors in capitalizing energy companies," Matlof said.

There's also a glut of turbine production - fueled by investments over the last half decade in the United States, Europe and Asia - and not enough demand. Global purchases of turbines will fall 14 percent this year from 2010 and won't surpass 2011 levels for two years, Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates.

That's hurting the biggest makers of turbines, the giant fanlike devices that turn kinetic energy from gusts of wind into mechanical energy. Vestas Wind Systems in the Netherlands and India's Suzlon Energy reported wider-than-anticipated losses last month, and China's Sinovel Wind Group estimates that its 2011 profit fell by more than half from 2010. The companies have seen their stocks plunge in the past year.

With a market that's battering publicly traded companies, there's little room for startups to find opportunities, said Matlof, whose firm has invested in one early-stage wind company, Modular Wind Energy.

"Historically, there's been a handful of wind turbine companies that own all the development, all the technology and all the integration," he said.

Wind companies in the United States also face the expiration of a tax credit at the end of this year, adding to their risk. The industry is seeking a four-year extension to the credit, which helps lower the cost of wind power to make it more competitive with traditional sources of energy.

Venture capitalists for the most part are steering their investments toward technologies that make existing energy sources more efficient and alternative-energy sources easier to deploy, Matlof said.

As far as investing in production itself, "that is not a winning formula going forward," he said.

SOURCE





Australia: Hospitals face $170m hit from sick carbon tax

VICTORIA'S health system faces a $170 million carbon tax slug in the next decade. A secret report reveals the controversial tax will add 15 per cent to hospital power bills.

Private hospital patients also face higher charges, as leading operators warn they will pass on tens of millions of dollars in costs of the Gillard Government's greenhouse emissions scheme.

2A report commissioned by the Victorian Department of Health reveals the state's public hospitals will have to find $12.3 million more for energy bills in the first year of the carbon tax.

Cost increases will also hit medical supplies such as anaesthetic. Ambulance and hospital catering bills will soar.

Hospital catering costs will rise by $131,000 from next year, while Victoria's ambulance service will have to find an extra $334,000 as higher energy and aviation fuel costs flow through.

The total annual tax hit from July across the public health sector will be $13.4 million.

The Sinclair Knight Merz report, obtained by the Herald Sun, shows carbon tax costs will rise to $14.8 million in 2014 and hit $19 million by 2020. Over 10 years, the total cost to the Victorian public health system will be $170 million - about two thirds of the price of a new Monash Children's Hospital, which is still to be financed.

According to the report, "the carbon price results in an average real increase of 14 per cent" in electricity prices while natural gas will rise by an even steeper 16 per cent next year.

For Melbourne's biggest public hospitals, such as the Alfred and the Austin, the annual cost will be about $1 million. "Should the Federal Government not come to the party and compensate our hospitals for this massive impost, it's Victorian patients that will suffer," Health Minister David Davis said. "This tax will slow the growth in operations and other patient services."

Private hospitals warned the tax could result in higher private higher insurance premiums.

Chris Rex, the head of Australia's largest private hospital chain, Ramsey Health Care, said his company expects to pass on the costs.

A spokesman for federal Health Minister Tanya Plibersek said the costs of health services were forecast to rise by just 0.3 per cent - 10c a week for the average household - according to Treasury modelling.

The Government will provide increased family payments and pensions to counter the effects of the carbon tax on family living costs.

SOURCE

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