Pielke: Systematic Misrepresentation of the Science of Disasters and Climate Change

From Roger J. Pielke Jr.'s blog:

This post summarizes and reviews the systematic misrepresentation of the science of disasters and climate change in major science assessments, partly for my own purposes, but also to explain that there is a pattern of behavior taking place in this community that should be of concern to anyone who cares about the integrity of science, regardless of their position on climate policies and politics.

What I document below includes the following:

1. Reliance on non-peer reviewed, unsupportable studies rather than the relevant peer reviewed literature.
2. Reliance on and featuring non-peer reviewed work conducted by the authors of the assessment reports.
3. Repeated reliance on a small number of secondary of tertiary sources, repeatedly cited such that intellectual provenance is lost.

The questions that I have are, does anyone in the mainstream scientific or media communities actually care? Or is climate change politics so important that we cannot simultaneously worry about standards of scientific integrity?

Read the whole thing.

Chicago: June's chill is one for the records

Via the WGN Weather Center Blog

The cloudy, chilly and rainy open to June here has been the talk of the town. So far this June is running more than 12 degrees cooler than last year, and the clouds, rain and chilly lake winds have been persistent. The average temperature at O'Hare International Airport through Friday has been only 59.5 degrees: nearly 7 degrees below normal and the coldest since records there began 50 years ago.

More bad weather is on the way Saturday with a cold rain expected to linger through the bulk of the morning. Rainfall could be heavy -- especially north of the city, which would be a reversal of Thursday's deluge that targeted the southern suburbs.

Canada frosts the most widespread in recent memory

More evidence of global cooling via Reuters, Tue Jun 9, 2009 1:54pm EDT:

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - The multiple frosts that have blanketed Western Canada in the last week are the most widespread in the top canola-growing province of Saskatchewan in at least five years, the Canola Council of Canada said on Tuesday.

and...

In Manitoba, the frost is the worst in memory for its frequency and area covered, said Derwyn Hammond, the province's senior agronomy specialist for the Canola Council.

Despite what you might hear from the global warming alarmists, 2009 is shaping up to be one of the coolest years in quite a while. More from Joe Bastardi's European blog. Note that Bastardi's previous forecast has now been "updated" at Accuweather but has been preserved for posterity by Anthony Watt.

According to Long Range Expert Joe Bastardi, areas from the northern Plains into the Northeast will have a “year without a summer.” The jet stream, which is suppressed abnormally south this spring, is also suppressing the number of thunderstorms that can form.

Yikes indeed!

June 6th, 1944

Sign of the day

Burger King:

Recession woes for "not self-sustaining" Crown Corps?

Hey, maybe every cloud really does have a silver lining.

The wonders of carbon

Beyond all this alarmism about global warming or ocean acidification, we need to see that on a deeper level it is a debate about carbon, and when we dig into that level of the debate we will finally see that behind the demonization of carbon and CO2, it is all about an attack on humanity itself.

Global warming alarmism is not a science, but a religio/political movement. This paper will show why it is a dangerous totalitarian ideology and a more serious threat to human freedom than Communism or Nazism. It is also like a bad joke, because carbon just happens to be the most wonderful of all the elements in the periodic table because of its ability to make so many organic compounds that are fundamental to the formation of life.

Read The Vindication of Carbon by Robert D. Brinsmead.

Waxman-Markey hot air

"Are you asking me?", Rep. Henry Waxman admits that he hasn't read the massive climate change bill that he's pushing through Congress.



Rep. Waxman says he "trusts the scientists". Of course, he's actually referring to the 51 government appointed authors of the IPCC "summary for policy makers", not the 650 international scientists who dissent over Man-Made Global Warming claims and certainly not the 32,000 scientists who last year went on the record as being opposed to the IPCC's claims of human induced global warming. No, not those scientists.

Then there's the video below from the Heritage Foundation shows how the global warming tax will kill jobs and the economy while doing nothing for the environment.

Waxman-Markey Global Warming Tax: The cap-and-trade tax proposed by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA) is disguised as environmental legislation when it would have little impact on global temperatures. In fact, it is a massive energy tax that promises soaring household energy bills, major job losses, income cuts, and a sharp left turn toward big government.

Climate Change "consensus"

Mark W. Hendrickson writes about the myth of climate change consensus at Townhall.com

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is widely regarded in the media as the ultimate authority on climate change.

[...]

Clearly, the IPCC does not speak as one voice when leading scientists on its panel contradict its official position. The solution to this apparent riddle lies in the structure of the IPCC itself. What the media report are the policymakers’ summaries, not the far lengthier reports prepared by scientists. The policymakers’ summaries are produced by a committee of 51 government appointees, many of whom are not scientists.

The policymakers’ summaries are presented as the “consensus” of 2,500 scientists who have contributed input to the IPCC’s scientific reports. “Consensus” does NOT mean that all of the scientists endorse the policymakers’ summaries. In fact, some of the 2,500 scientists have resigned in protest against those summaries. Other contributing scientists, such as the individuals quoted above, publicly contradict the assertions of the policymakers’ summaries.

The sponsors of the IPCC, the United Nations, and liberal American politicians all share the goal of reducing Americans’ wealth by capping our consumption of energy with a binding international climate change treaty. They are willing to resort to scientific fraud to further their goal.

Well worth reading the whole thing (link above).

Economic Strangulation

President Obama continues to implement the most radical socialist agenda in American history. He has already nationalized large segments of the banking, insurance and automobile industries, while managing to quadruple the national deficit with his record government spending spree. All this under the guise of "economic stimulus" intended to kick start the struggling economy.

The left's "green" agenda will soon be bringing a "cap & trade" carbon tax to a neighbourhood near you. Just what the economy needs - more taxes and higher energy costs.

But the One has also managed to put a stranglehold on America's ability to free itself of it's energy dependence on foreign oil, says Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson:

The Green Left must be thrilled with the new Obama/Pelosi/Reid (OPR) troika in charge of the federal government. Three times already, the troika has blocked the development of domestic oil resources.

During his first week in office, President Obama rescinded his predecessor’s executive order permitting drilling on the continental shelf and in the Green River Formation. Both areas contain abundant oil—especially Green River (under Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah), which has recoverable shale-oil reserves three times the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia.

Several weeks later, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar unilaterally canceled 77 oil and gas leases in Utah, on the grounds that (I kid you not) someone might catch a glimpse of temporary drilling equipment from the national park that sits more than a mile away.

[...]

In addition to increasing American dependence on foreign oil by thwarting such domestic development, the OPR/green alliance desires the imposition of expensive cap-and-trade rules to discourage utilities from using coal, which currently provides nearly half of America’s electricity.

Read the rest at FrontPage Magazine.

Corcoran: Capped, traded and scammed by fake markets

Terence Corcoran in the Financial Post:

Not that we needed proof that the ideology of market mechanisms and carbon taxes as a cure to environmental problems is a total sham. We now have enough evidence to convict the perpetrators for first degree economic policy fraud. The evidence mounts around the world, but now mostly in the United States of America, where President Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress are on the brink of burying real markets in energy and automobiles under the biggest command-and-control economic experiments since the great totalitarian regimes of the 20th century.

RTWT.

AGW Alarmists "out in the cold"

So sayeth Andrew Bolt in Australia's Herald Sun:

IT'S snowing in April. Ice is spreading in Antarctica. The Great Barrier Reef is as healthy as ever.

And that's just the news of the past week. Truly, it never rains but it pours - and all over our global warming alarmists.

Time's up for this absurd scaremongering. The fears are being contradicted by the facts, and more so by the week.

Doubt it? Then here's a test.

Name just three clear signs the planet is warming as the alarmists claim it should. Just three. Chances are your "proofs" are in fact on my list of 10 Top Myths about global warming.

And if your "proofs" indeed turn out to be false, don't get angry with me.

Just ask yourself: Why do you still believe that man is heating the planet to hell? What evidence do you have?

So let's see if facts matter more to you than faith, and observations more than predictions.

Be sure to check out Andrew's list of top 10 myths about global warming.

h/t: Watts Up With That?