NYC Letter: Hot/Cold, Part II

Day 252 of CHOPE

Global warming alert! Don't throw out your woolies yet.

U.S. NORTHEAST MAY HAVE COLDEST WINTER IN A DECADE

September 28, 2009 (Bloomberg) - The U.S. Northeast may have the coldest winter in a decade because of a weak El Nino, a warming current in the Pacific Ocean, according to Matt Rogers, a forecaster at Commodity Weather Group. Matt Rogers, Commodity Weather Group forecaster:

It could be one of the coldest winters, or the coldest, winter of the decade.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air comments:

Global-warming activists insist that we can’t take an assumption from a single year. However, if the CWS forecast turns out to be correct, we will have gone eleven years without any warming at all — eleven years in which carbon emissions did not decline in any significant manner. How does one begin to explain that?

MORE DISREPUTABLE “SCIENCE”
FROM THE AGW ALARMIST CROWD

September 29, 2009 (QandO) - Last week I pointed to the fact that the “scientist” who provided much of the basis for the AGW [scil., Anthropogenic Global Warming] crowd’s alarmist appeal (as incorporated in the UN’s 2007 IPCC report) refused to provide the original data on which that model was based to peers. He later claimed that the original data had been lost because it was unable to be transferred to newer data storage (an unmitigated crock). IOW, peers can’t review his data and check out his theory to ensure what he’s theorizing has a valid basis in fact. That’s a cardinal sin in real science circles.

And now, in less than a week, a second cardinal sin is uncovered. That of cherry-picking data. In the cross-hairs is Keith Briffa. Steve McIntyre explains the problem:

The Briffa temperature graphs have been widely cited as evidence by the IPCC, yet it appears they were based on a very carefully selected set of data, so select, that the shape of the graph would have been totally transformed if the rest of the data had been included.

In fact, as with Phil Jones who I reported about last week, Briffa refused repeated requests for his original data (from tree rings). And it was the Briffa graphs which were used to support the contention that the “hockey stick” was valid.

When others finally got a hold of all the data and graphed it out, their findings were quite different than Briffa’s:

And, of course, when they were merged they told quite a different story than Briffa and the IPCC:

Yes. [Pause.] That's somewhat wholly different.

Who to trust, the smart money investing in heating oil, the bogus science, or the crackerjack climatologists in the Senate?

BOXER, KERRY SET TO INTRODUCE
CLIMATE BILL IN SENATE

September 28, 2009 (NYT) - Ending some nine months of closed-door deliberations, Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) will release global warming legislation Wednesday that they hope will be the vehicle for broader Senate negotiations and an eventual conference with the House.

... The Boxer-Kerry bill will build in large part off H.R. 2454, legislation approved in June by the House following several marathon months of negotiations that involved lawmakers representing coastal and industry-heavy districts. ... Kerry last week sought to change the vernacular surrounding the climate bill and sell its concepts more broadly, insisting it is not a "cap and trade" proposal but a "pollution reduction" bill. Mr. Kerry:

I don't know what 'cap and trade' means. I don't think the average American does. This is not a cap-and-trade bill, it's a pollution reduction bill.

Mr. Kerry doesn't know what "cap-and-trade" means after building his bill on H.R. 2454, the seminal cap-and-trade legislation. Is Mr. Kerry as stupid as he claims? [Pause.] We are here inclined to believe Mr. Kerry.

James Inhofe (R-OK), EPW Committee ranking member:

No matter the semantic games employed, or the extent to which Democrats wish to hide the truth from the American people, cap and trade will mean more job losses (and this), more pain at the pump, and higher food and electricity prices for consumers.

CHOPE.

Science every bit as good as the politics.

Posted by Damian at September 29, 2009 11:45 PM