The “uncertainty” behind global warming science that got its real start with the ClimateGate emails is getting legs as more and more “questionable” things start to pop up.  Here is the latest:

Glaciergate

The IPCC and it’s chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, are starting to take real heat, particularly in India and the UK for promoting the completely speculative idea that the Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035 (90% probability).  This was a complete failure to follow their own rules of only using peer-reviewed literature, since they got this from an interview with one of Pachauri’s TERI scientists, Hasnain, in New Scientist, via the World Wildlife Fund.  TERI is now facing serious questions for claiming as recently as 15 January 2010 in a request for funding that the Himalayan glaciers will soon be gone…  Even the lead author on the IPCC AR4 section is now distancing himself from this

Amazongate?

Similar to the aforementioned problem with Himalayan glaciers, it also appears that the IPCC relied on WWF and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature as the primary source for their claim that the Amazon rainforest would dry up and disappear…

IPCC using non-peer reviewed primary sources?

The IPCC AR4 report draws heavily on publications by the World Wildlife Fund, which is most definitely NOT peer-reviewed science.

Cherry-picking weather stations…

The NASA GISS group that puts together the GHCN temperature measurement database appears to have been cherry-picking which weather stations they use, discarding those at high altitude or latitude.  This includes: using four stations for all of California, all of which are located near the beach; 35 stations in Canada, instead of the 600 that were used in the 1970s, and no stations in Bolivia on the odd basis that the Bolivians were late every month in submitting the data (couldn’t you go back an insert the missing data???).  The result is that temperatures far from the few weather stations are being interpolated from the limited dataset in use.  A NASA staffer is quoted as saying:

Schmidt also said a smaller sampling of weather stations in the Canadian Arctic wouldn’t have a significant impact on the data. He said any long-term temperature changes recorded at the high Arctic station at Eureka, would likely be “representative” of changes elsewhere in the region, even in a sub-Arctic city like Yellowknife.

“Temperature anomalies don’t vary that much from one (nearby) station to another,” he said. “You don’t need thousands of stations across Canada to know what the monthly anomalies are.”

This is like saying that temperature measurements in Edmonton, Alberta are a good guidance for Houston, Texas…  And why does Bolivia always seem so warm in the NASA databases…

Or just adjusting the data…

The NASA GISS group also appears to have scrambled around trying to cover up a change in how they handled data post 2000, by altering the previous data in the same way and then denying that it changes their results…  McIntyre has more on this one.

No basis for linking global warming and natural disasters:

The IPCC claimed in it’s 2007 AR4 document that “the world has suffered rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s” and “One study has found that while the dominant signal remains that of the significant increases in the values of exposure at risk, once losses are normalised for exposure, there still remains an underlying rising trend.”

The problem is that the “one study” wasn’t yet published, nor peer-reviewed, and when it was finally published in 2008, it contained this caveat:

We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses.

Interesting.  So there isn’t any science behind this either.  h/t to Jonathon Leake at the Times.

It is also interesting that this same paper was the source for much of the doom and gloom in the Stern Report.   Interesting too that the UK government has been “editing” the Stern Report very recently to try to make some of the “false claims” disappear.  Too bad their math doesn’t add up.

I hope that the government in Ottawa is reading all of this…

Peter Foster provides a very good explanation of why private members bill C-300 should be killed post-haste.  The most concise line indicating why it should die?

Karl Marx couldn’t have said it better.

Recently, a number of politicians have talk about how stimulus money can be directed towards infrastructure projects that are “shovel-ready”, meaning that they are essentially read to start construction.  The mayor of Calgary, Dave Bronconnier, defined this the other day as projects ready to start construction within 120 days.

First off, 120 days is four months.  This recession could be largely over in four months.

Read the rest of this entry »

Interesting:

…it clearly shows that in the past four years — the period corresponding to reduced solar activity — all of the rise in global temperatures since 1979 has disappeared.

It may be that more global warming doubters are surfacing because there just isn’t any global warming.

Finally, nature puts the lie to the enviroterrorists who have spent the last 20 years trying to scare us into sacrificing our livelihoods for socialism.

The Conservative government should whole-heartedly support Liberal MP Dan McTeague’s pricate member’s bill to make RESP contribution’s tax deductible.  It is a “less government” idea!  However, to protect the state from deficit financing, they should immediately propose cutting spending to some social program or the CBC to fund this tax cut.  And then see if the Opposition supports it.

OK,

I have returned from a vacation overseas and I would like to comment on my experience at Pearson International Airport…

I’ve travelled a fair bit, and can say that I was once again less that impressed by the quality of service provided by the GTAA. Considering their landing fees and other costs imposed on travellers are the highest in the world it is extremely disappointing.

• The taxes and fees added to my ticket by the airlines for YYZ exceed those of the other three airports on the trip combined. And those other airports weren’t minor places…
• The layout of the terminals is poor compared to other airports around the world. the new Terminal 1 is an improvement but still has problems.
• Once in the aircraft, why are we in a queue for three hours for deicing and takeoff? I’ve been through half a dozen other major airports during similar conditions and the delays are not that bad. FRA, LHR, CDG, DEN, ORD. Even smaller airports like YYC and YUL don’t have such a terrible time when the weather goes bad.
• Lack of sufficient washroom facilities, particularly in busy areas such the secure Customs areas. The washrooms shouldn’t be queued up like it’s intermission at Maple Leaf Gardens when four or more planeloads of people are coming off long international flights.

The only good thing I can say about YYZ is that the prices in the airport aren’t as ridiculous as some airports (3.50 € for a 0.5 litre Coke is unbelievable).

So this is blogging. Not too exciting so far.

The purpose of this blog is for me to posit ideas (or rants, as the case may be) on various topics such as:

• Politics (mostly Canadian issues)
  
• Society (what drives me nuts about our world)
  
• Science (cool stuff)
• Technology (frustrations)
• Or whatever else takes my fancy…

At some point I may accept comments.