Climate Smörgåsbord , vol 2, no 1

UK.Gov kills Wind Power

Even the Nanny State is throwing in the towel on "renewable" wind power, realizing that expensive, intermittent power requiring massively polluting backup coal plants and which is only "sustainable" by continuing and ever increasing subsidies is a brain dead idea.

It looks as though the wind energy boom is over. UK energy minister Greg Barker has hinted at a significant change in government strategy - cutting subsidies for the deployment and operation of environmentalists’ favoured technologies.

...

Consumers bore the cost of wind’s intermittency and operators were paid when not producing any electricity. In one case an operator asked to be paid ten times as much to close the turbines as they would have received operating them for contributions to the National Grid. Those payments, hidden until this year, rose 13,733 per cent in 2011.

Other than that, it's awesome.

A reasoned presentation on dealing with global warming

No, really.  I'm pretty skeptical of the whole ZOMG Thermageddon thing, but there is actually an interesting case to be made about how to address the public policy aspects of the issue.  Srlsy.

Climate Scientist Roger Pilke Jr has a very interesting presentation on how the current warming debate has utterly failed, and what issues need to be addressed head on if there's any hope at all of action.  Proposals that will reduce GDP, people's standard of living, or condemn the developing world to poverty are, according to Pielke, immoral and counter productive.  Actually, you can count me in that camp, too.

Pielke thinks we should do something about CO2, but his presentation is entirely sensible and worth your time.  I'm still not convinced on the recent warming claims (I think there are terrible quality problems with the temperature databases), but if every warmist was a sensible as Pielke, the world would be a better place.  Recommended.

Having trouble getting peer-reviewed research linking global warming and tornadoes?

Climate Science has jumped the shark - Science by Press Release has been replaced by Science by Telephone Poll.  Reprinted in full here at the invitation of Anthony Watts.  Next time anyone tells you that "the science is settled", mock them. 

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Since warming hasn’t been cooperating lately, in desperation, Yale and George Mason University are trying to use a poorly worded and loaded poll to convince us that “weather is climate”. Problem is, the data does not support it.

Here’s the poll released today:


Just looking at the cover tells you a lot, it’s about the imagery of fear and terror, not facts.

Here’s a quote from the many news stories being circulated today in the MSM:

“Most people in the country are looking at everything that’s happened; it just seems to be one disaster after another after another,” said Anthony A. Leiserowitz of Yale University, one of the researchers who commissioned the new poll. “People are starting to connect the dots.”

Well by all means, let’s “connect the dots”, but let’s use history and data rather than sloppy questions like this:

What’s hilarious about this question is that the memory of such events is aided by the stories in the mainstream media, and what we are seeing is a positive feedback loop. More on that below. 


These are probably the most pointless and loaded questions ever to be put into a poll about weather, why? because short-term memory is better than long-term, and they play into this fact, biasing the results strongly. Plus, it has been shown that bad weather itself affects memory:

“We predicted and found that weather-induced negative mood improved memory accuracy,” he wrote in the study, which is published in the current Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

Another study from the University of Toronto has also shown a link between bad moods and ability to remember details.

Forgas speculated that a worse mood helps us to focus our attention on the surroundings and leads to a more thorough and careful thinking style, while happiness tends to reduce focus and increase both confidence and forgetfulness.

Yale makes no mention of this psychological tendency to remember better in bad weather in their study, nor do they correct for it. So then, it is no surprise to see results like this for weather in the last year:

(Update: in comments, Thomas has this to say:)

According to the poll 21% of respondents experience a tornado in the last year. Extrapolating that out to the U.S. population, that would mean that over 60 million Americans were affected by tornadoes in 2011.

That strikes me as wildly inaccurate and falls into question whether this poll has any validity at all.

I’d really like to see what the last 10 years looks like in a similar question…but they wouldn’t dare do that, because it would not give the results they seek.  Plus, the type of severe weather events listed above, have regional distributions. For example, the south far more likely to have tornadoes and hurricanes that the Pacific Northwest. And in any given year, a strong wind and a strong rainstorm are common events just about anywhere, yet they try to make normal weather part of the “extreme” weather pattern, without defining what “extreme” weather is to the person being polled.

But, by saying “we are taking a poll about extreme weather” and then including winds, rain, snowstorms, heat waves, cold snaps, etc, which are regular occurences, lumping them with tornadoes, hurricanes, etc…they bias the poll by association. It’s a clever trick, and it is also dishonest.

And in a hat tip to the slimy “forecast The Facts” campaign against TV weathercasters that don’t “toe the line” on saying garbage like this, here’s the poll’s hat tip to that paid political ploy run by the Center for American Progress:

In stark contrast the agenda filled Yale poll by Anthony A. Leiserowitz, a Gallup poll from last week says that American don’t seem much concerned about global warming at all. In fact it is dead last in the concerns. They are getting desperate, in fact MSM coverage of climate issues has dropped significantly, according to Media Matters:

A Media Matters report released this week found that broadcast news coverage of climate change has dropped significantly since 2009, despite a series of key developments in climate science and politics.

This is why warmists need a new ploy, if they can make global warming about everyday weather, they’ll have a golden hammer. In my opinion, it is psychological terrorism.

Ok let’s look at that positive feedback loop of opinion aided by the MSM I mentioned earlier. For that, I’m reposting portions of:

Why it seems that severe weather is “getting worse” when the data shows otherwise – a historical perspective

Published in April 2011 on WUWT

Bouziotas et al. presented a paper at the EGU a few weeks ago (PDF) and concluded:

Analysis of trends and of aggregated time series on climatic (30-year) scale does not indicate consistent trends worldwide. Despite common perception, in general, the detected trends are more negative (less intense floods in most recent years) than positive. Similarly, Svensson et al. (2005) and Di Baldassarre et al. (2010) did not find systematical change neither in flood increasing or decreasing numbers nor change in flood magnitudes in their analysis.

Note the phrase I highlighted: “Despite common perception”.  I was very pleased to see that in context with a conclusion from real data.

That “common perception” is central to the theme of “global climate disruption”, started by John P. Holdren in this presentation, which is one of the new buzzword phrases after “global warming” and “climate change” used to convey alarm.
Like Holdren, many people who ascribe to doomsday scenarios related to AGW seem to think that severe weather is happening more frequently. From a perception not steeped in the history of television technology, web technology, and mass media, which has been my domain of avocation and business, I can see how some people might think this. I’ve touched on this subject before, but it bears repeating again and in more detail.

Let’s consider how we might come to think that severe weather is more frequent than before. Using this Wikipedia timeline as a start, I’ve created a timeline that tracks the earliest communications to the present, adding also severe weather events of note and weather and news technology improvements for context.

• Prior to 3500BC – Communication was carried out through paintings of indigenous tribes.
• 3500s BC – The Sumerians develop cuneiform writing and the Egyptians develop hieroglyphic writing
• 16th century BC – The Phoenicians develop an alphabet
• AD 26-37 – Roman Emperor Tiberius rules the empire from island of Capri by signaling messages with metal mirrors to reflect the sun
• 105 – Tsai Lun invents paper
• 7th century – Hindu-Malayan empires write legal documents on copper plate scrolls, and write other documents on more perishable media
• 751 – Paper is introduced to the Muslim world after the Battle of Talas
• 1305 – The Chinese develop wooden block movable type printing
• 1450 – Johannes Gutenberg finishes a printing press with metal movable type
• 1520 – Ships on Ferdinand Magellan‘s voyage signal to each other by firing cannon and raising flags.
• 1776 The Pointe-à-Pitre hurricane was at one point the deadliest Atlantic hurricane on record. At least 6,000 fatalities occurred on Guadeloupe, which was a higher death toll than any known hurricane before it. It also struck Louisiana, but there was no warning nor knowledge of the deaths on Guadeloupe when it did. It also affected Antigua and Martinique early in its duration.
• 1780 – The Great Hurricane of 1780, also known as Hurricane San Calixto is considered the deadliest Atlantic tropical cyclone of all time. About 22,000 people died when the storm swept over Martinique, St. Eustatius and Barbados between October 10 and October 16. Thousands of deaths also occurred offshore. Reports of this hurricane took weeks to reach US newspapers of the era.
• 1793 – Claude Chappe establishes the first long-distance semaphore telegraph line
• 1812 – The Aug. 19, 1812 New Orleans Hurricane that didn’t appear in the Daily National Intelligencer/(Washington, DC) until later September. Daily National Intelligencer. Sept. 22, 1812, p. 3. Dreadful Hurricane. The following letters present an account of the ravages of one of those terrific storms to which the Southern extreme of our continent is so subject. Extract of a letter from Gen. Wilkinson, dated New Orleans, August 22.
• 1831 – Joseph Henry proposes and builds an electric telegraph
• 1835 – Samuel Morse develops the Morse code
• 1843 – Samuel Morse builds the first long distance electric telegraph line
• 1844 – Charles Fenerty produces paper from a wood pulp, eliminating rag paper which was in limited supply
• 1849 – Associated Press organizes Nova Scotia pony express to carry latest European news for New York newspapers
• 1851 – The New York Times newspaper founded
• 1876 – Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas A. Watson exhibit an electric telephone in Boston
• 1877 – Thomas Edison patents the phonograph
• 1889 – Almon Strowger patents the direct dial telephone
• 1901 – Guglielmo Marconi transmits radio signals from Cornwall to Newfoundland
• 1906 – Reginald Fessenden used a synchronous rotary-spark transmitter for the first radio program broadcast, from Ocean Bluff-Brant Rock, Massachusetts. Ships at sea heard a broadcast that included Fessenden playing O Holy Night on the violin and reading a passage from the Bible.
• 1914 – teletype intrduced as a news tool The Associated Press introduced the “telegraph typewriter” or teletype into newsrooms in 1914, making transmission of entire ready to read news stories available worldwide.
• 1920 – The first radio news program was broadcast August 31, 1920 by station 8MK in Detroit, Michigan, which survives today as all-news format station WWJ under ownership of the CBS network.
• 1925 – John Logie Baird transmits the first television signal
• 1928 – NBC completed the first permanent coast-to-coast radio network in the United States, linked by telephone circuits
• 1935 – Associated Press launched the Wirephoto network, which allowed transmission of news photographs over telephone lines on the day they were taken.
• 1942 – Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil invent frequency hopping spread spectrum communication technique
• 1946 – The DuMont Television Network, which had begun experimental broadcasts before the war, launched what Newsweek called “the country’s first permanent commercial television network” on August 15, 1946
• 1947 – Douglas H. Ring and W. Rae Young of Bell Labs proposed a cell-based approach which lead to “cellular phones“
• 1947 – July 27th. The WSR-1 weather surveillance radar, cobbled together from spare parts of the Navy AN/APS-2F radar was put into service in Norfolk, NE. It was later replaced by improved models WSR-3 and WSR-4
• 1948 – Network TV news begins. Launched in February 1948 by NBC, Camel Newsreel Theatre was a 10-minute program anchored by John Cameron Swayze, and featured newsreels from Movietone News. CBS soon followed suit in May 1948 with a 15-minute program, CBS-TV News, anchored by Douglas Edwards and subsequently renamed Douglas Edwards with the News.
• 1948 – The first successful “tornado forecast” issued, and successfully predicted the 1948 Tinker Air Force Base tornadoes which were two tornadoes which struck Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on March 20 and March 25.
• In 1953, Donald Staggs, an electrical engineer working for the Illinois State Water Survey, made the first recorded radar observation of a “hook echo” associated with a tornadic thunderstorm.
• 1957 the WSR-57 the first ‘modern’ weather radar, is commissioned by the U.S. Weather Bureau
• 1958 – Chester Carlson presents the first photocopier suitable for office use
• 1960 – TIROS-1 the first successful weather satellite, and the first of a series of Television Infrared Observation Satellites, was launched at 6:40 AM EST^[1] on April 1, 1960 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
• 1962 – The first satellite television signal was relayed from Europe to the Telstar satellite over North America.
• 1963 – First geosynchronous communications satellite is launched, 17 years after Arthur C. Clarke‘s article
• 1963 CBS Evening News establishes the standard 30 minute network news broadcast. On September 2, 1963, the show expanded from 15 to 30 minutes.
• 1966 – Charles Kao realizes that silica-based optical waveguides offer a practical way to transmit light via total internal reflection
• 1967 – The National Hurricane Center is established in the Miami, FL National Weather Service Forecast Office.
• 1969 – The first hosts of ARPANET, Internet‘s ancestor, are connected.
• 1969 – August 14-22 Hurricane Camille, a Category 5 storm, gets widespread network news coverage from correspondents “on the scene”.
• 1969 – Compuserve, and early dialup text based bulletin board system is launched in Columbus, Ohio, serving just that city with a
• 1971 – Erna Schneider Hoover invented a computerized switching system for telephone traffic.
• 1971 – Ray Tomlinson is generally credited as having sent the first email across a network, initiating the use of the “@” sign to separate the names of the user and the user’s machine.
• 1972 – Radio Shack stores introduce “The Weather Cube”, the first mass marketed weather alert radio. (page 77 here) allowing citizens to get weather forecasts and bulletins in their home for only $14.95
• 1974 April 3rd – WCPO-TV in Cincinnati carries the “Sayler Park Tornado” live on television as it was crossing the Ohio river. It was part of the biggest tornado super outbreak in history. It is the largest tornado outbreak on record for a single 24-hour period. From April 3 to April 4, 1974, there were 148 tornadoes confirmed in 13 US states. Lack of timely warnings demonstrated the need for an expanded NOAA weather radio warning system.
• 1974 – The first Synchronous Meteorological Satellite SMS-1 was launched May 17, followed later by GOES-1 in 1975.
• 1974 the WSR-74 the second modern radar system is put into service at selected National Weather Service office in the United States and exported to other countries.
• 1975 – The Altair 8800, the world’s first home computer kit was introduced in the January edition of popular electronics
• 1975-1976 NOAA Weather Radio network expanded from about 50 transmitters to 330 with a goal of reaching 70 percent of the populace with storm warning broadcasts.
• 1977 – Radio Shack introduces a weather radio with built in automatic alerting that will sound off when the National Weather Service issues an alert on the new expanded NOAA Weather Radio network with over 100 stations. Page 145 here
• 1977 – The Apple II, one of the first highly successful mass-produced home microcomputers was introduced.
• 1978 – NOAA Weather Radio receivers with automatic audio insertion capabilities for radio and TV audio began to become widely installed.
• 1979 – The first commercially automated cellular network (the 1G) was launched in Japan by NTT in 1979, initially in the metropolitan area of Tokyo. Within five years, the NTT network had been expanded to cover the whole population of Japan and became the first nationwide 1G network.
• 1980 – Cable News Network (CNN) is founded by Ted Turner.Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States.
• 1980 -  A heatwave hit much of the United States, killing as many as 1,250 people in one of the deadliest heat waves in history.
• 1981 – Home satellite dishes and receivers on C-band start to become widely available.
• 1981 – The IBM Personal Computer aka IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981, it set a standard for x86 systems still in use today.
• 1982, May 2nd – The Weather Channel (TWC) is launched by John Coleman and Joe D’Aleo with 24 hour broadcasts of  computerized weather forecasts and weather-related news.
• 1983 – Sony released the first consumer camcorder—the Betamovie BMC-100P
• 1983 America Online (then as Control Video Corporation, Vienna, Virginia) debuts as a nationwide bulletin board system featuring email.
• 1983 – The first 1G cellular telephone network launched in the USA was Chicago-based Ameritech using the Motorola DynaTAC mobile phone.
• 1984 – The Apple Macintosh computer, with a built in graphical interface, was announced. The Macintosh was introduced by the now famous US$1.5 million Ridley Scott television commercial, “1984“. The commercial most notably aired during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on 22 January 1984 and is now considered a “watershed event”.
• 1985 – Panasonic, RCA, and Hitachi began producing camcorders that recorded to full-sized VHS cassette and offered up to 3 hours of record time. TV news soon began to have video of news and weather events submitted from members of the public.
• 1986 July 18th, KARE-TV in Minneapolis dispatches a news helicopter to catch live video of a tornado in progress, live at 5:13 PM during their news broadcast.
• 1988 – Doppler Radar goes national – the construction of a network consisting of 10 cm (4 in) wavelength radars, called NEXRAD or WSR-88D (Weather Service Radar 1988 Doppler), was started.
• 1989 – Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau built the prototype system which became the World Wide Web at CERN
• 1989 – August Sony announced the Sony ProMavica (Magnetic Video Camera) electronic still camera, considered the first widely available electronic camera able to load images to a computer via floppy disk.
• 1991 – Anders Olsson transmits solitary waves through an optical fiber with a data rate of 32 billion bits per second.
• 1991  – The 1991 Perfect Storm hits New England as a Category 1 hurricane and causes $1 billion dollars in damage. Covered widely in TV and print, it later becomes a movie starring George Clooney.
• 1992 – Neil Papworth sends the first SMS (or text message).
• 1992 – August 16-28 Hurricane Andrew, spotted at sea with weather satellites, is given nearly continuous coverage on CNN and other network news outlets as it approaches Florida. Live TV news via satellite coverage as well as some Internet coverage is offered. It was the first Category 5 hurricane imaged on NEXRAD.
• 1993 – The Great Mississippi Flood was carried on network television as levees breached, millions of viewers watched the flood in real-time and near real-time.
• 1994 – Internet2 organization created
• 1994 – Home satellite service DirecTV launched on June 17th
• 1994 – An initiative by Vice President Gore raised the NOAA Weather Radio warning coverage to 95 percent of the US populace.
• 1995 – The Weather Underground website was launched
• 1995 – DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) began to be implemented in the USA
• 1996 – Home satellite service Dish Network launched on March 4th
• 1996 – Fox News Channel was launched on October 7, 1996 with 24 hour news coverage
• 1996 – The Movie “Twister” was released on May 10, showing the drama and science of severe weather chasing in the USA midwest.
• 1999 – Dr. Kevin Trenberth posts a report and web essay titled The Extreme Weather Events of 1997 and 1998 citing “global greenhouse warming” as a cause. Trenberth recognizes “wider coverage” but dismisses it saying:   “While we are indeed exposed to more and ever-wider coverage of the weather, the nature of some of the records being broken suggests a deeper explanation: that real changes are under way.”
• 2002 – Google News page was launched in March. It was later updated to so that users can request e-mail “alerts” on various keyword topics by subscribing to Google News Alerts.
• 2004 – December: A freak snowstorm hits the southernmost parts of Texas and Louisiana, dumping snow into regions that do not normally witness winter snowfall during the hours leading up to December 25 in what is called the 2004 Christmas Eve Snowstorm.
• 2004 – DSL began to become widely accepted in the USA, making broadband Internet connections affordable to most homes.
• 2004 – On November 19, the Website “Real Climate” was introduced, backed by Fenton communications, to sell the idea of climate change from “real scientists”.
• 2004 – December The website “Climate Audit” was launched.
• 2005 – August, Hurricane Katrina caused catastrophic damage along the Gulf Coast of the United States, forcing the effective abandonment of southeastern Louisiana (including New Orleans) for up to 2 months and damaging oil wells that sent gas prices in the U.S. to an all-time record high. Katrina killed at least 1,836 people and caused at least $75 billion US in damages, making it one of the costliest natural disasters of all time. TV viewers worldwide watched the storm strike in real time, Internet coverage was also timely and widespread.
• 2006 – Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and opening in New York City and Los Angeles on May 24. It went on to limited theater release and home view DVD. It was the first entertainment film about global warming as a “crisis”, with hurricane Katrina prominently featured as “result” of global warming.
• 2006 – The short instant message service Twitter was launched July 15, 2006
• 2006 – November 17th, Watts Up With That was launched.
• 2007 – The iPhone, with graphics and Twitter instant messaging capabilities was released on June 29, 2007.
• 2007 – The reality show “Storm Chasers” debuts on the Discovery channel on October 17, 2007, showing severe weather pursuit as entertainment.
• 2007 – On October 10th, in Dimmock v Secretary of State for Education and Skills Al Gore’s AIT movie was challenged in a UK court, and found to have nine factual errors. It was the first time “science as movie” had been legally challenged.
• The 2008 Super Tuesday tornado outbreak was a deadly tornado outbreak affecting the Southern United States and the lower Ohio Valley from February 5 to February 6, 2008. With more than 80 confirmed tornados and 58 deaths, the outbreak was the deadliest in the U.S. since the May 31, 1985 outbreak that killed 76 across Ohio and Pennsylvania. It was widely covered live on US media.
• 2010 – A heat wave in Russia was widely reported by global media as being directly a result of “global warming”. Scientific research from NOAA released later in 2010 and 2011 showed that to be a false claim.
• 2011 – On January 4th, the Pew Research Center released a poll showing that Internet had surpassed television as the preferred source for news, especially among younger people.
• 2011  – March, notice of an Earthquake off the coast of Japan was blogged near real-time thanks to a USGS email message alert before TV news media picked up the story, followed by A Tsunami warning. A Japanese TV news helicopter with live feed was dispatched and showed the Tsunami live as it approached the coast of Japan and hit the beaches. Carried by every major global news outlet lus live streamed on the Internet, it was the first time a Tsunami of this magnitude was seen live on global television before it impacted land.

Compare the reach and speed of communications and news reporting at the beginning of this timeline to the reach and speed of communications and news reporting technology around the beginning of the 20th century. Then compare that to the beginning of the 21st century. Compare again to what we’ve seen in the last 10 years.

With such global coverage, instant messaging, and Internet enabled phones with cameras now, is it any wonder that nothing related to severe weather or disaster escapes our notice any more? Certainly, without considering the technological change in our society, it would seem as if severe weather events and disasters are becoming much more frequent.

To borrow and modify a famous phrase from James Carville:

It’s the technology, stupid.

Which speaks to the phrase: “Despite common perception” which I highlighted at the beginning. The speed of weather tracking and communications technology curve aids in our “common perception” of severe weather events. The reality of severe weather frequency though, is actually different. While we may see more of it, that happens because there are millions more eyes, ears, cameras, and networks than ever before.

1. There are less Tornadoes in the USA

2. Global tropical cyclone activity, as measured by frequency and ACE is at the lowest in 30 years, despite 2010 being claimed as the warmest year ever:

Global Tropical Cyclone ACE (Dr. Ryan N. Maue, FSU)

3. And now, back to our original seed for this long thread, no effect in global flooding events:

Destructive floods observed in the last decade all over the world have led to record high material damage. The conventional belief is that the increasing cost of floods is associated with increasing human development on flood plains (Pielke & Downton, 2000). However, the question remains as to whether or not the frequency and/or magnitude of flooding is also increasing and, if so, whether it is in response to climate variability and change.
Several scenarios of future climate indicate a likelihood of increased intense precipitation and flood hazard. However, observations to date provide no conclusive and general proof as to how climate change affects flood behaviour.

Finally, this parting note.

While our world has seen the explosion of TV news networks, Internet News websites. personal cameras and recording technology, smartphones with cameras, and the ability to submit a photo or movie or live video feed virtually anywhere, anytime, giving us reporting of weather and disaster instantly on the scene, where tornadoes live on TV is becoming a ho-hum event, there’s one set of elusive phenomena that still hasn’t seen an increase in credible reporting and documentation:

UFO’s, Loch Ness monster,  and Bigfoot.

We still haven’t seen anything credible from the millions of extra electronic eyes and ears out there, and people still marvel over old grainy images. You’d think if they were on the increase, we’d know about it. ;-)
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And this article is also germane:
The Amazing Decline in Deaths from Extreme Weather in an Era of Global Warming, 1900–2010
Proponents of drastic curbs on greenhouse gas emissions claim that such emissions cause global warming and that this exacerbates the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, including extreme heat, droughts, floods and storms such as hurricanes and cyclones. But what matters is not the incidence of extreme weather events per se but the impact of such events—especially the human impact. To that end, it is instructive to examine trends in global mortality (i.e. the number of people killed) and mortality rates (i.e. the proportion of people killed) associated with extreme weather events for the 111-year period from 1900 to 2010.

This is due to better warnings, and yes, the MSM (especially TV and radio) is key to getting those warnings out.

Here’s another germane article:

Another blow to warmist hysteria over weather is not climate unless we say it is: “2011 damage is qualitatively indistinguishable from 1974″

Simmons, K., D. Sutter, R.A. Pielke, Jr. (2012), Blown away: monetary and human impacts of the 2011 U.S. tornadoes. Extreme events and insurance: 2011 annus horribilis (Edited by C. Courbage and W.R. Stahel) The Geneva Reports: Risk and Insurance Research , Published March 2012.
Pielke Jr. writes on his blog:

1. When using our dataset, it is best to use the damage numbers as tabulated by the US NWS as they are consistent over time
2. That said, 2011 damage is qualitatively indistinguishable from 1974 and 1954 1953 at >;$20B
3. That would give a simple baseline expectation of 1 in 20 for 2011, but half or twice that would not be implausible given the uncertainties, so between 1 in 10 and 1 in 40
4. For 2012 and looking ahead there are two big question marks, one more certain than the other. Urbanization is increasing, which means that the chance of large losses increases (somewhat at the expense of smaller and medium losses of course). And there has been a notable and significant decline in the incidence of strong tornadoes in recent decades

Here’s the summary from the report:
The decades leading up to 2011 convinced many that the tornado threat had been reduced to the point that 100 fatality tornadoes and 500 fatality years were in the past. After all, neither figure had been exceeded in the U.S. in over 50 years. The National Weather Service implemented a nationwide network of Doppler weather radars in the 1990s. Warning lead time doubled, and then almost doubled again, providing sufficient time for families to receive a warning and take shelter. Television stations used sophisticated graphics to cover tornadoes with ever-increasing accuracy. Street level tracking software allowed TV viewers to know the exact location of a tornado and how close it might get to their home.

In this environment, a tornado that killed 10 or more people was national
news and could grab the attention of the public for days and perhaps weeks. In 1999 one of the most powerful tornadoes ever documented struck a metropolitan area and resulted in 36 deaths, which while tragic, was only a fraction of the toll that might have been expected from a tornado like this at the start of the 20th century. The benchmark for what constituted a major tornado event was much different than 1974, when the 3-4 April “Super Outbreak” killed over 300 people. Things were different now, or so many people thought.

We begin by summarising the damages and fatalities from U.S. tornadoes in 2011. Next, we examine the tornado outbreak as it relates to the historical record. The next section  looks at the role that extreme weather played, followed by a discussion of some of the  vulnerabilities that are known to increase fatalities from tornadoes. We then consider  what can be done to limit damages and fatalities from future tornado outbreaks. Finally,  we discuss whether or not this was an event that can be expected to occur again and then  we conclude.
…
Three previous seasons—1953, 1965 and 1974—now rival damage in 2011. Normalised  damage exceeded US$20 billion in 1953 and 1965 and exceeded US$10 billion in  1974. The 1953 season provides perhaps the best historical comparison with 2011, as much of the damage in 1965 and 1974 occurred in just one outbreak. Damage in 1965 is attributable to the Palm Sunday outbreak, while damage in 1974 occurred in the 2-3  April “Super Outbreak”. 1953 had multiple damaging outbreaks in different parts of the  country. One of the worst tornadoes of 1953 occurred in Worcester, MA, and ranked first  in normalised damage until the Joplin tornado of 2011.
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Here’s another:
“…it would be a mistake to blame climate change for a seeming increase in tornadoes”

“If you look at the past 60 years of data, the number of tornadoes is increasing significantly, but it’s agreed upon by the tornado community that it’s not a real increase,” said Grady Dixon, assistant professor of meteorology and climatology at Mississippi State University.

“It’s having to do with better (weather tracking) technology, more population, the fact that the population is better educated and more aware. So we’re seeing them more often,” Dixon said.

But he said it would be “a terrible mistake” to relate the up-tick to climate change.

Full story here.
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Every time warmist academics try to push these ridiculous opinion polls as proof of “global warming makes weather more severe and more frequent” all it takes is a casual look at the data to know they are blowing hot air.

I give carte blanche permission to repost this article far and wide, bloggers, have at it.

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(Borepatch again)

Of course, you can always mock them with this, which always brings a smile to my face.

Climate Smörgåsbord , vol 2, no 1

I can't believe that it's3 months into the new year, and this is the first of these.  I'm slacking off.

EU Commits Suicide

The EU has just adopted a resolution mandating elimination of cars from cities and a 50% reduction in low-cost flights to southern Europe:

The European Commission on Monday unveiled a "single European transport area" aimed at enforcing "a profound shift in transport patterns for passengers" by 2050.

The plan also envisages an end to cheap holiday flights from Britain to southern Europe with a target that over 50 per cent of all journeys above 186 miles should be by rail.

Top of the EU's list to cut climate change emissions is a target of "zero" for the number of petrol and diesel-driven cars and lorries in the EU's future cities.

Siim Kallas, the EU transport commission, insisted that Brussels directives and new taxation of fuel would be used to force people out of their cars and onto "alternative" means of transport.

Translation: we've tried to convince all y'all; now we're going to make you.

Good luck with that.  What's the over/under on EU breakup happening before 2050?

California Governor cancels drought

This is getting reported kind of all over.  What's not getting reported is why.  The Sierra-Nevada mountains didn't just get record snowfall this winter, they got twice the normal snowfall:

It is called “Miracle March 2011” in the Sierra. At Boreal, near Donner Summit, as of a few days ago, they had received 217 inches this March bringing the seasonal snowfall to 762 inches. The previous record was 662 inches in 1994/95. The recent prolonged storm brought 6-7 feet of snow. The normal for the season is around 400 inches. Their snowbase is between 275 and 375 inches (20-30 feet).

The Snow Water Equivalent is well above normal and bodes well for both agriculture and coastal cities which rely on the melting snow for irrigation and drinking water. There have been battles for decades over how much water the farmers should get to use in the long dry growing season.

The downside?  There will be so much fresh water that there will be enough for even hippies to shower ...

Gallup: US Public doesn't really care about Global Warming

This is me, looking shocked.  Shocked:

With Earth Day about a month away, Americans tell Gallup they worry the most about several water-related risks and issues among nine major environmental issues. They worry least about global warming and loss of open spaces.

Maybe the hysterical shrieking of the last decade - combined with the collapse of all past predictions of higher temperatures in the face of a decade of cooler weather - has something to do with it?  Nah - got to be those Big Oil funded Deniers!  Go take a shower, hippy.

" One in 2000 year flodding event" in Oz story based on fabricated data

This is me, looking shocked.  Again:

EXTREME rainfall so rare it happens on average once every 2000 years has been "invented" by the government operator of a major Queensland dam as part of its explanation for releasing huge volumes of water that caused most of Brisbane's January flood.

The claim by SEQWater in its official report that a "one-in-2000-year" rainfall event occurred over the Wivenhoe Dam at a critical stage on January 11 has been widely reported in the media and cited by senior public servants to justify the near loss of control of the dam at the time.
But no such rainfall event was measured by any rainfall gauges.

Instead, the claim was manufactured by SEQWater after it modelled the rapid rise of levels in the dam, repositioned rainfall data to an area immediately upstream of the dam, and then doubled it.

Look, guys, don't be too hard on them.  All the data supporting Global Warming is dodgy.  All of it.  These guys are just following climate science "Best Practice".  First the sentence, then the trial ...

Boy, it's a good thing that the US public isn't paying much attention to that, or you'd have even less of them worried about Global Warming ...

How the sausage is made

Offered without comment, because none is really needed.

Inspired by Adams, and offered for your approval:

Most stolen from Watts Up With That, 'cause I'm kind of busy.

Climate Smörgåsbord , vol 1, no 4

Lots of news that's worth your while this week.

The saga of 10:10 - the folks who brought you Kill the children for Baby Jesus Mother Gaia - shows no sign of letting up:

• 10:10, the video's creators, are losing their corporate sponsorships left and right.
• The 10:10 group was founded by Franny Armstrong to get people to reduce their Carbon emissions by 10% in 10 years (or something).  It seems that Franny has a hankering for out-of-season blueberries.  Flown on jets from Chile to the UK.
• Hitler doesn't understand why people don't think that the video is funny:

They even accuse me of being a Nazi.  Heh.

The data is dodgy, episode MCLIV

Yeah, you've been hearing me complain about this forever, but Jo Nova has an outstanding series on this that you should read in full:

• Part 1: Thermometer siting problems.
• Part 2: Just how many thermometers are used?  Which ones, and who decides?
• Part 3: Ocean Temperatures.  Ocean water holds way more heat than air does, so ocean temperature is much more significant to climate than air temperature.  What you'll read here about the sensor network will surprise you.

Kiwigate?

A while back I mentioned that a group in New Zealand claimed that the Kiwi.Gov weather bureau (the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, or NIWA)had been fudging the national climate data, and that the "raw" (unadjusted) data show no warming at all since 1850.  Well the New Zealant Climate Science Coalition took NIWA to court over the matter, and NIWA seems to be running for the hills:

New Zealand’s government via its National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) has announced it has nothing to do with the country’s “official” climate record in what commentators are calling a capitulation from the tainted climate reconstruction.

NIWA’s statement claims they were never responsible for the national temperature record (NZTR).The climb down is seen as a dramatic legal triumph for skeptics of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition (NZCSC) who had initiated their challenge last August when petitioning the high court of New Zealand to invalidate the weather service’s reconstruction of antipodean temperatures.

According to NZCSC, climate scientists cooked the books by using the same alleged ‘trick’ employed by British and American doomsaying scientists. This involves subtly imposing a warming bias during what is known as the ‘homogenisation’ process that occurs when climate data needs to be adjusted.

Stay tuned on this one.  Transparency is the big problem in Climate Science, and the courts may have the ability to force some things out into the light of day.

It's the Sun, stupid

Some people are saying that the sun is heating things up, when it seems strongly tied to cooling cycles (at least currently, but this has been known since 1801).  I'll post on this later, as it has an interesting historical angle.  Too bad most of the "Consensus" climate community are so profoundly ignorant of history.  I guess it's easier to get computer models to tell you what you want.

Climate Smörgåsbord , vol 1, no 3

Save the environment, clear cut the Forrest.

When you think about replacing fossil fuel electricity generation with renewable sources like Solar or Wind, you need to find a place to put the collectors. Denmark has established aggressive national goals for wind generation, and has found the perfect place to site the near-thousand foot windmills: a National Park that they're going to clear cut:

The Danish environment minister Troels Lund Poulsen decided, on behalf of the government, on 30th September 2009, that the clearing of 15 km2 of forest in the north west of Denmark will take place. A test centre for the development of offshore windmills is planned to take up 30 km2 of land in the Thy region, near Østerild. This deforestation will create an increase of 400,000 tonnes of CO2 emission, the equivalent of the CO2 emission of 100,000 people per year.

The government will force the local population out of their homes. The reasoning behind this is said to be for the benefit of the Danish windmill industry, which will in turn create more Danish jobs. The regulations to finalise the evictions goes against Denmark’s constitution and is therefore clearly illegal.

...

The Danish government has not consulted properly about the plans. The Danish citizens had little time to put forward comments of the project. The hearing has only been 11 days long, with 9 of those being a national holiday.

Well of course they planned the public hearings when everyone is on holiday. Otherwise, people might have asked all sorts of embarrassing questions. Can't have a bunch of tree huggers getting in the way of saving the environment!

Oh, and now that it's clear what a disaster is the Spanish "green power" program that Obama used as a model, this bold action by the Danish government must now be the inspiration for the coming US "green" revolution.

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Create Jobs! Quintuple the price of Electricity!

That Spanish Green Power program that's bankrupting the Spain.Gov? Seems even the Germans can't make it work:

he German solar subsidy is something like 50 cents per KwH — to give one a sense of scale, the typical electricity price from fossil fuels there or here is something like 8-10 cents per KwH. Subsidizing just 20% of US electricity production at this kind of rate would cost $50 billion a year. Subsidizing all production would cost a quarter of a trillion dollars a year.

Let's see: if you wanted to add 100,000 "green" jobs, a quarter trillion dollars means you could pay each person $2.5M a year. Man, this environmentalism thing sure sounds lucrative! Where do I sign up?

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Public acceptance in climate warming scare continues to plummet.

Yeah, I know - dog bites man:

Climate agnostics now outnumber true believers who believe radical action is required for the first time, according to a YouGov poll.

The number of people who acknowledge scientific opinions differ has risen from 25 to 33 per cent, while the number who believe global warming is "a serious and urgent problem and radical steps must be taken NOW to prevent terrible damage being done to the planet" has fallen 10 per cent to 28 per cent over a year. The number of respondents who declare that they're "very interested" in global warming has fallen from 31 per cent in 2007 to 18 per cent.

Yeah I know - this is the UK. So how does the American public feel about it?

Only about a third (32%) says it is very important for Congress to address climate change in the coming months, including 47% of Democrats, 29% of independents and 17% of Republicans. This is consistent with earlier Pew Research surveys that show the public putting a relatively low priority on addressing climate change.

People dig the idea that their electric bills will quintuple. Yeah, sounds like a great time to muscle Cap-And-Trade through Congress. Note to Contemptible Democratic Party: when you're in a hole, stop digging.

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The Theory can't be wrong, the Data must be, part XLVII.

Carbon Dioxide levels before the last Ice Age were 5 times what they are today:

The CO₂ folk are flummoxed. In the current issue of Science (14 May) William F. Ruddiman of the University of Virginia wrings his hands over the mismatch between unchanging carbon dioxide levels and the drastically cooling climate over the past 20 million years. “Major glaciations began in the Northern Hemisphere around 2.75 million years ago, after a long prior interval of climatic cooling,” Ruddiman says, “… but our understanding of the driving forces behind the cooling remains incomplete.” [emphasis in original - Borepatch]

But we have to act on CO₂ right now!!!!1!!one!

Climate Smörgåsbord , vol 1, no 2

What happens when you subsidize solar power?

Spain has a set of policies in place to encourage the spread of solar power generation. The result is that companies selling electricity to the grid get a higher price per kilowatt-hour if the power was generated by solar panels. The result is exactly what you'd expect - people use electric lights to generate "solar" power at night (machine translation from the German):

After press reports, it was established during inspections that several solar power plants were generating current and feeding it into the net at night. To simulate a larger installation capacity, the operators connected diesel generators.

"This is just the tip of the iceberg," said one industry expert to the newspaper "El Mundo", which brought the scandal to light. If solar systems apparently produce current in the dark, will be noticed sooner or later. However, if electricity generators were connected during daytime, the swindle would hardly be noticed.

The Two Things explains economics (and other fields), in a way that the Spain.Gov hasn't learned:

One: Incentives matter. Two: There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

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Wind power is sinking

Literally:

European wind farms are a sunk cost. Quite literally.

Hundreds of Britain’s offshore wind turbines could be sinking into the sea because of a design flaw. It is believed the concrete used to fix some turbines to their steel foundation can wear away, causing the power generators to drop a few inches. The fault was first discovered at the Egmond aan Zee wind farm in the Netherlands and affects those with single cylinder foundations.

Green power really is renewable, in the sense that it needs renewing when it sinks into the sea.

But I'm sure that the Government will manage our health care better than this.

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Fewer women dieing in childbirth seems to be bad news

The medical journal The Lancet* has a new study out showing that the death rate for Third World women from pregnancy- and childbirth-related causes continues to drop. You'd think that this would be good news, but then again, you're probably not a professional advocate for women's health:

But some advocates for women’s health tried to pressure The Lancet into delaying publication of the new findings, fearing that good news would detract from the urgency of their cause, Dr. Horton said in a telephone interview.

“I think this is one of those instances when science and advocacy can conflict,” he said.

Dr. Horton said the advocates, whom he declined to name, wanted the new information held and released only after certain meetings about maternal and child health had already taken place.

...

“People who have spent many years committed to the issue of maternal health were understandably worried that these figures could divert attention from an issue that they care passionately about,” Dr. Horton said. “But my feeling is that they are misguided in their view that this would be damaging. My view is that actually these numbers help their cause, not hinder it.”

Never mind the science, we have a World To Save™! The similarities to the Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis are purely coincidental.

* Yeah, I know it's The Lancet. Take it all with a grain of salt, although at least this time they look like they resisted political pressure.

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Support the Copenhagen Accords or lose foreign aid

It seems that the west - specifically the Moral Titans running the EU, UK, and US governments - threatened to cut off aid to Third World countries that didn't support last December's Copenhagen Accord climate treaty:

Climate aid threat to countries that refuse to back Copenhagen accord

The pressure on poor countries to support the US, EU and UK-brokered Copenhagen accord came as 190 countries resumed UN climate talks in Bonn in an atmosphere of mutual suspicion.

“The pressure to back the west has been intense,” said a senior African diplomat. “It was done at a very high level and nothing was written down. It was made very clear by the EU, UK, France and the US that if they did not back them then they would suffer.”

...

And the evidence of the threat being carried out is here:

Yesterday it emerged that the US is to cut climate aid to Bolivia, Ecuador and other countries who have refused to sign up to the accord. But the outgoing UN climate change chief, Yvo de Boer, said: “Bolivia is losing $2.5m in climate funds. That’s about what the presidential palace pays for toilet paper a year. Bullying is not an effective instrument.”

But remember, you are the racist hater. And the UN hasn't given up after the disastrous Copenhagen meeting; they're back in Bonn, preparing for the upcoming December re-do in Cancun:



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It's all peer-reviewed science, except for the 30% that isn't

Image credit: Borepatch

Remember the UN's IPCC climate report? Remember that it was the Last Word in our scientific understanding? Remember how it was all rigorously peer-reviewed? Oops:

As usual, it’s honest volunteers who have conscientiously tested the IPCC by going through 18,500 references. And the final total? Fully 5,600, or 30%, of their references are not peer reviewed.

Once again, it's a bunch of Internet amateurs who have had to fact check the Climate Scientists. I guess the UN science budget isn't high enough to pay for quality control.

Snark aside, there's a point to this:

So why bother tallying them up? It’s the IPCC who made this point matter. They are the ones who market themselves as being holier-than-thou, as superior experts who only use peer reviewed evidence. Peer-review has been their gate-keeper: On the one hand they “own” the journals and simply reject contrary viewpoints, and on the other, they’ve convinced much of the less science-savvy world that peer-review matters and is a mark of quality. Their bluster is almost totally based on the fallacious argument from authority, and backed up by a few half-truths.

Every time the IPCC have spat on a scientist with “that’s not peer reviewed”, they have set themselves up to look like duplicitous fools when caught relying on student theses, magazine articles, and boot cleaning guides.

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Hey you Deniers - get off my lawn!

Climate Smörgåsbord , vol 1, no 1

While I've been remiss in my security postings lately, the smörgåsbord format is pretty handy for when there's a lot of news. Since there's a lot of climate science news, I'm starting a new feature here.

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The Dog Ate My Data

Charles at The Dog Ate My Data finds continuing incompetence at the New Zealand Government's Climate Science branch:

A press release by the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition (NZCSC) reveals that New Zealand’s weather bureau (NIWA: The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research) no longer holds any records supporting its “adjustments” and manipulation of its official raw temperature observations. From Scoop,

"In December, NZCSC issued a formal request for the schedule of adjustments under the Official Information Act 1982, specifically seeking copies of “the original worksheets and/or computer records used for the calculations”. On 29 January, NIWA responded that they no longer held any internal records, and merely referred to the scientific literature."

Well isn’t that a surprise. NIWA “adjusts” the official temperature record of New Zealand which shows no measureable change in average temperature for the last 150 years and ends up with a graph of “adjusted” temperatures showing a sharp warming trend. In other words the entire warming trend in the NZ record was in the NIWA “adjustments” but they do not have any record of the adjustments (the dog ate my data). NIWA cannot justify the warming trend it built into its published data.

Other than that, it's rock solid. Denyer.

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The IPCC reports continue to unravel

Remember the IPCC reports, and how everything in them is the best-of-the-best, uber-researched and peer-reviewed out the wazoo? Remember how dozens of the "scientific papers" cited in it are press reports from Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Federation? Well, that train is still a-rollin':

Following an investigation by this blog (and with the story also told in The Sunday Times), another major “mistake” in the IPCC’s benchmark Fourth Assessment Report has emerged.

Similar in effect to the erroneous “2035″ claim – the year the IPCC claimed that Himalayan glaciers were going to melt – in this instance we find that the IPCC has wrongly claimed that in some African countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 percent by 2020.

At best, this is a wild exaggeration, unsupported by any scientific research, referenced only to a report produced by a Canadian advocacy group, written by an obscure Moroccan academic who specialises in carbon trading, citing references which do not support his claims.

And it's not just the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4); people are finding dozens of Greenpeace citations in AR3, too.

Other than that, it's rock solid. Denyer.

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The press continues to be AWOL on this story, except for the British press

Interestingly, they're all over it like stink on a dog. Everyone else, not so much:

Nothing prevented Ms. O'Neil from taking a firsthand look at the IPCC report herself. She, like me, could have typed "WWF" (which stands for the activist group, the World Wildlife Fund) into a search box and found the 16 distinct WWF citations in the IPCC's 2007 report. Within a few minutes she could also have found the eight Greenpeace papers listed.

In the process she might have noticed that one of her scientific experts - Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg (whom she quoted as saying: "I don't think you could have a more rigorous process") - is a co-author of one of those non-peer-reviewed Greenpeace papers.

Hoegh-Guldberg, O., H. Hoegh-Guldberg, H. Cesar and A. Timmerman, 2000: Pacific in peril: biological, economic and social impacts of climate change on Pacific coral reefs. Greenpeace, 72 pp.

Instead, Ms. O'Neill - who has 25 years experience as a journalist - was utterly bamboozled by the PR machine which is the IPCC. She fell for their slick mirage. And then she passed it along to her viewers and readers.

Other than that, it's rock solid. Denyer.

And there's quite a good Mark Steyn post on this. Insty excerpted a short amount, but you should really RTWT, which is much longer, and spot on.

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Washington DC getting too warm for snow

Borepatch operative Rick emails to point out that RFK Jr. wrote 15 months ago that global warming had eliminated winter snow sports from Washington DC.

Not only is he (Rick, not RFK Jr.) a Denier, he's a lawyer. You've been warned.

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Lord Monkton Videos from Oz

From his talk in Melbourne.





Other than that, it's rock solid. Denyer.

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IPCC Head Funded by Big Oil

You can't make this up, you know. We've all heard how the skeptics* are all in the pay of Big Oil, right? Well, soft-core pornographer and IPCC President Rajendra Pachauri's publisher threw a dinner/drinks bash to launch his novel. The bash's sponsor? British Petroleum.

* Note to Big Oil. I'm still waiting for my bushel baskets of Denier cash. Please expedite what needs expediting. kthanxbai.

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Bad Science kills.

Professor Phil Jones of Climategate fame is so upset he contemplated suicide. Not much sympathy over at Ann Althouse's place. While I continue to believe that Dr. Jone's career is over, I hope he gets help. Nobody deserves to end that way.

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No need to thank me, it's all part of the service

A referral led me to this astonishing Google search. #3 out of almost a million.

It's actually a good post, covering what is IMHO the most disturbing aspect of the whole warming debate - the way that the raw data has been folded, spindled, and mutilated to such an extent that it's no longer recognizable. If you have to be at the top of Google for something, this at least is doing a public service.

And a shout out to Madd Medic for helping to goose the rankings! Even though he's a Denier.

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So that's how the Greenhouse science works

Counting Cats in Zanzibar lays it out. I hadn't really understood precisely how it works, but he clarifies it. The Cliff Notes' version: air pressure. Srlsy. And he has an update.

He doesn't take either a pro- or anti- AGW stance in this post, but just walks us through the science. But he's a Denier, anyway.

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There you go - all you Deniers are now up to date. Now get the heck off my lawn!