What some scientists are saying …

As reported by Newswise.com …

“La Nina Pacific Ocean Cooling Pulls Global Temps Below Norms”

“Released: 2/5/2011 6:00 AM EST”

“Source: University of Alabama Huntsville”

“Global Temperature Report: January 2011”

“Global climate trend since Nov. 16, 1978: +0.14 C per decade”

January temperatures (preliminary) Global composite temp.: -0.01 C (about 0.02 degrees Fahrenheit) below 30-year average for January. Northern Hemisphere: -0.06 C (about 0.11 degrees Fahrenheit) below 30-year average for January. Southern Hemisphere: +0.04 C (about 0.07 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for January. Tropics: -0.37 C (about 0.67 degrees Fahrenheit) below 30-year average for January.

January temperatures (preliminary) Global composite temp.: -0.01 C (about 0.02 degrees Fahrenheit) below 30-year average for January. Northern Hemisphere: -0.06 C (about 0.11 degrees Fahrenheit) below 30-year average for January. Southern Hemisphere: +0.04 C (about 0.07 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for January. Tropics: -0.37 C (about 0.67 degrees Fahrenheit) below 30-year average for January.

Notes on data released Feb. 3, 2011: The La Nina Pacific Ocean cooling event continues to pull down temperatures, with the global average temperature falling below seasonal norms for the first time in 18 months and only the second time in almost two and a half years, according to Dr. John Christy, professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Technical note?

One of the most frequent “tricks” of those who manipulate their findings to present a case more favorable to their patron’s political and social requirements, involves cherry-picking a timescale to highlight the results necessary to please the patrons. In some cases, a change in time scale or data capture methodology makes the data incomparable with previous efforts – that is, without the touch of a human hand to manipulate the data. This can be seen in many computer models where the missing data is replaced with a “best guess” or the data is “smoothed” to eliminate computational anomalies. In this case, the authors are to be commended to placing this information “up front” instead of in the footnotes where it normally appears.

Technical Note: The baseline period used to determine seasonal norms has been changed from the 20-year (1979 to 1998) period at the beginning of the satellite record to a new 30-year (1981 to 2010) reference average. This was done to match the climatological period normally used with climate data by the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization.

About the project and the measurements …

As part of an ongoing joint project between UAHuntsville, NOAA and NASA, Christy and Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist in the ESSC, use data gathered by advanced microwave sounding units on NOAA and NASA satellites to get accurate temperature readings for almost all regions of the Earth. This includes remote desert, ocean and rain forest areas where reliable climate data are not otherwise available. The satellite-based instruments measure the temperature of the atmosphere from the surface up to an altitude of about eight kilometers above sea level. Once the monthly temperature data is collected and processed, it is placed in a "public" computer file for immediate access by atmospheric scientists in the U.S. and abroad.

Not all research funds are equal …

Neither Christy nor Spencer receives any research support or funding from oil, coal or industrial companies or organizations, or from any private or special interest groups. All of their climate research funding comes from federal and state grants or contracts.

As if receiving money from the government was not a cause for significant bias in favor of findings that appear to support the government’s political and social agenda, the institutional reporter felt compelled to perpetuate a slur on legitimate research funding sources with their disclaimer.

From Roy Spencer’s blog …

You will notice that all of the temperature record is well-contained within a very narrow band of +/- one degree Centigrade. Well within the noise band of nature’s climate variability and the error range of our current instrumentation. No significant cause for alarm unless you are a politician depending on the science to advance your political agenda of domination over the United States and its citizens.

What does Roy Spencer think?

One need only read Spencer’s book, “The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists,” to find that the guy who gathers and analyzes the raw data has a common sense approach to explaining global climate change.

“About one-half of Blunder is a non-technical description of our new peer reviewed and soon-to-be-published research which supports the opinion that a majority of Americans already hold: that warming in recent decades is mostly due to a natural cycle in the climate system — not to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning.”

“Believe it or not, this potential natural explanation for recent warming has never been seriously researched by climate scientists. The main reason they have ignored this possibility is that they cannot think of what might have caused it.”

It’s the clouds stupid!

Climate is a naturally-occurring chaotic phenomenon which cannot be fully modeled any more than one can model the stock market. Yes, there are apparent short trends which can be isolated and examined, but when one pulls back and examines the whole picture, one notices that we are back to a chaotic system and the trends disappear in the sands of time. Or as Roy Spencer puts it …

“The most obvious way for warming to be caused naturally is for small, natural fluctuations in the circulation patterns of the atmosphere and ocean to result in a 1% or 2% decrease in global cloud cover. Clouds are the Earth’s sunshade, and if cloud cover changes for any reason, you have global warming — or global cooling.”

How could the experts have missed such a simple explanation? Because they have convinced themselves that only a temperature change can cause a cloud cover change, and not the other way around. The issue is one of causation. They have not accounted for cloud changes causing temperature changes.

The experts have simply mixed up cause and effect when observing how clouds and temperature vary. The book reveals a simple way to determine the direction of causation from satellite observations of global average temperature and cloud variations. And that new tool should fundamentally change how we view the climate system.

A hint for those who cannot think of what might be causing global warming: how about the natural variability of nature – where there have been hotter times and colder times on Earth and the global temperature is always regressing to a yet as unknown mean value?

Why carbon dioxide?

Truth-be-told, water vapor (clouds) are the largest greenhouse gas and that carbon dioxide is a very small part of the overall equation. Yet, the scientists must demonize carbon dioxide as it is the only manner in which the government can exert control over energy production, distribution and consumption – and thus control the economy of the United States for political purposes.

And even the carbon dioxide scenario can be easily explained as a part of nature’s feedback loop.

It appears that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and dissolved in the oceans is more or less constant. Considering Henry’s law, warming oceans emit more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Cooling oceans allow more carbon dioxide to be dissolved in the water. Considering that most climate scientists are honest enough to note that the rise in carbon dioxide lags the rise in temperature by 600 to 1,000 years (depending on the dataset being used), CO2 can hardly be causal of global warming. And mixing correlation and causality is a critical flaw in their logic.

Spencer even makes a case for the desirability of an increased carbon dioxide level …

“But in Blunder I address what other scientists should have the courage to admit: that maybe putting more CO2 in the atmosphere is a good thing. Given that it is necessary for life on Earth, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is surprisingly small. We already know that nature is gobbling up 50% of what humanity produces, no matter how fast we produce it. So, it is only logical to address the possibility that nature — that life on Earth — has actually been starved for carbon dioxide.”

Bottom line …

If the research appears to be this clear, why aren’t more scientists speaking out about this causal phenomenon? Unfortunately, the answer is peer pressure and greed – the same type of greed that drove our current financial meltdown – where the billions of dollars flowing to prestigious institutions for climate research appears to be dictating the findings of the climate scientists who have found fame and fortune by siding with the government’s political agenda. All of which was brought to light by the Climate-gate e-mail scandals which revealed, in no uncertain terms, that the science was manipulated to produce a pre-ordained outcome and the normally sacrosanct journal “peer review” process was subverted by a relatively few number of “important” climatologists to advance their funding agenda and to keep from being publicly discredited.

It is now up to the American people to tell the politicians “enough is enough.” To sanction those who have robbed our treasury and produced nothing by chaos in our current political arena. It is now up to the American people to demand proof that any political solution can affect climate change and to prove that the instruments can even measure the change accurately.

The truth is simple: we are governed by corrupt politicians who want to perpetuate their power and continue to loot our national treasury on behalf of themselves and their special interest cronies. We must say “NO” to their political subversion lest we find ourselves with a corrupt progressive government similar to those in Cuba, Venezuela and other third-world nations.

In 2012 … Just say “No” to the progressive democrats and to the republicans (e.g. Snowe, Collins, McCain, Graham, etc.) who are every bit as progressive as the democrat colleagues.

-- steve

Reference Links …

La Nina Pacific Ocean Cooling Pulls Global Temps Below Norms

Dr. Roy Spencer – Blog

“The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists – Roy Spencer