Christopher Monckton, Editor ♦ www.scienceandpublicpolicy.org

November 2009 | Volume 1 | Issue 11

SPPI Monthly CO2 Report

3 The Climategate scandal: a discredit to real science T he author itative M onthly C O 2 R epor t for November 2009 r epor ts, as most of the mainstr eam media do not, on the C limategate scandal: the r elease by a whistleblower at the Univer sity of E ast Anglia of thousands of emails and other documents exchanged between the two dozen bad scientists – a discr edit to their pr ofession – who, between them, have been chiefly r esponsible for fabr icating and foster ing the global-war ming illusion. Scientists should be seeker s after tr uth, not seeker s after gr ants or glor y. E ditor ial C omment: Page 3.

Dr. Wilson Flood demonstrates that there may have been no “global warming” in the 20th century. Pages 4-10.

IPCC assumes CO2 concentration will reach 836 ppmv by 2100, but, for almost eight years, CO2 concentration has headed straight for only 575 ppmv by 2100. This alone halves all of the IPCC’s temperature projections. Pages 12-13.

Since 1980 global temperature has risen at only 2.5 °F (1.5 °C)/century, not 7 F° (3.9 C°) as IPCC predicts. Pages 14-16.

Sea level rose just 8 inches in the 20th century, and has scarcely risen since 2006. The oceans are not warming. Page 16.

Arctic sea-ice extent is now beyond its summer low, but there was more summer ice than there was in 2007 or 2008. In the Antarctic, sea ice extent reached a record high in 2007. Global sea ice extent shows little trend for 30 years. Pages 19-22.

Hurricane and tropical-cyclone activity is almost at its lowest since satellite measurement began. Page 23.

Landfalling Philippine tornadoes have been declining in frequency since 1990. Page 24.

The Sun is still rather quiet, but some solar activity is returning: solar cycle 24 is on its way! Page 25.

The (very few) benefits and the (very large) costs of the Waxman/Markey Bill are illustrated at Pages 26-29.

Why CO2 does not change temperature much: David Evans explains in this month’s Science Focus. Pages 30-35.

As always, there’s our “global warming” ready reckoner, and our monthly selection of scientific papers. Pages 36-44.

SPPI Monthly CO2 Report : : November 2009 Accurate, Authoritative Analysis for Today’s Policymakers

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LIMATE SCIENTISTS can no longer be trusted. That is the inevitable consequence of a brave whistleblower’s revelations of the crude, loutish,

malevolent, mendacious emails, the messy computer code, the poorly-maintained temperature data, and the shocking financial records of profiteering scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit.

Those on both sides of the debate about the climate have been understandably shocked and dismayed at the sheer nastiness of the tone adopted not only by the UK “scientists” at the Climatic Research Unit, where one of the world’s two major terrestrial surface-temperature datasets is compiled, but also by their conspirators on the other side of the Atlantic. They showed utter contempt for anyone who dared to disagree with the conclusions they were falsely inviting the world to draw on the basis of their crude, incompetent, pseudo-scientific inventions.

No one at the University has made any attempt to deny that the emails are in substance genuine. They reveal a vicious, savage, malicious, deceitful arrogance on the part of a narrow, politicized clique of “scientists” who, over a period of decades, secretly conspired internationally to misinterpret, invent, lose, conceal, or destroy the scientific data about global temperatures that have been at the heart of the debate about whether manmade “global warming” is likely to prove catastrophic. Bluntly, the effect of the scientific fraud that these wretches perpetrated, at prodigious expense to long-suffering British and American taxpayers many of whom are already hard-pressed enough to wonder where their next square meal is coming from, was to contrive a greater rate of “global warming” in the 20th century than was ever likely to be true.

The world is understandably, rightly, furiously angry. In just two weeks, grandstanding heads of government and self-serving officials not only from almost 200 nations but also a shuffle of paper-pushers from almost 200 fat, costly, lazy, overpaid, underperforming UN bureaucracies will put the finishing touches to a “global warming” treaty that, if its early drafts are anything to go by, will vastly enrich and empower the political class at the expense – as always – of the little guy, by establishing an unelected, dictatorial world “government” with vast and unsupervised powers to inflict taxes, regulations, and controls on all nations foolish enough to sign the treaty.

And this entire pantomime will be based on a climatological analysis that we now know to be no better than science fiction.

As these Monthly CO2 Reports have long demonstrated, there has been no statistically-significant “global warming” for 15 years, and rapid global cooling for 9 years. Publicly, the UN’s climate panel and the “scientists” and environmental extremists who write its reports have been bossily telling us that x – 2 of the last x years have been “the warmest since records began”. Privately, they have been writing to one another to say that the world has indeed been cooling as we have said, and that it is a “travesty” that they are unable to explain why.

The cooling, like the 300 years’ warming before it, can be readily explained. It is the natural variability of the complex, non-linear, mathematically-chaotic climate. We need no other explanation. The sole reason why these liars, fraudsters, hucksters, shysters, and bunco-booth rip-off merchants cannot admit this simple and obvious fact is that they profit by blaming everything on CO2. Fire them! Monckton of Brenchley

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Editorial : : The Mother Of All Scandals After ClimateGate, The World Cannot Trust Its Climate Scientists

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C limate C hange and Summer T emper atur e T r ends in the United K ingdom

Dr. Wilson Flood of Dumfries, Scotland, has kindly communicated to us this exemplary paper on the true rates of temperature change in the United Kingdom, contrasting what is really happening with what is now known to be the science fiction of the temperature records compiled by the Hadley Centre for Forecasting jointly with the now-discredited Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

Dr. Flood kindly sent us this paper before the Climategate scandal broke. His paper is an excellent and thoughtful demonstration of how climate science ought to be – and once used to be – done. We are proud and privileged to be able to share it with our readers. Perhaps there was no “global warming” last century.

Description of temperature data used

Meteorological data for the United Kingdom is maintained by the UK Meteorological Office (www.metoffice.gov.uk). An extensive range of UK climate data is made available and is readily accessible through the internet. All the data used in this discussion were provided by the Met Office.

The Met Office’s Central England Temperature record, at www.hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/cetml1659on.dat, kept up since 1659, is the longest unbroken temperature record in the world and is an invaluable source of information for examining changes in the UK climate. Temperature data is averaged for a number of weather stations regarded as being representative of Central England rather than measuring

temperature at one arbitrary geographical point identified as the centre of England. Thus, at present, the recording sites used are in rural areas of Lancashire, Worcestershire and Hertfordshire. In order to eliminate the effects of increasing urbanisation, the location of the sites used has been changed regularly over the centuries. In this way the integrity of the record is maintained, allowing a fair comparison over time.

It could be argued that the geographical spread of the sites means that the Central England Temperature record reflects temperatures in the south and west of England at the expense of more northerly and eastern parts of the UK but these areas, or sites close to them, have always been used and the issue is more one of continuity than anything else. The Central

Featured : : The Truth About Temperature Forget Hadley/CRU. Forget GISS/NCDC. The Truth Is Elsewhere

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England Temperature record does not claim to be representative of the whole of the UK or even England.

In 1914 the Met Office established an extensive set of databases covering not only temperature but also rainfall and sunshine patterns for the various geographical areas of the UK: www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/datasets/index.html. There is a composite record for the whole UK, and England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own separate records. These separate areas of the UK are further subdivided allowing more local climate patterns to be examined.

Climate change and temperature data

The discussion of the existence of anthropogenic climate change (or more accurately global warming) is too well rehearsed elsewhere to require any debate here.

To take the central theme, the hypothesis maintains that the global atmosphere is sensitive to the release of quantities of greenhouse gases (GHGs) by human activity and this process will cause a substantial warming of the climate. The primary cause is the trapping of solar warmth due to GHGs slowing the rate at which infrared radiation is radiated from the Earth’s surface back into space.

The Central England Temperature record provides a 351-year record of temperature changes thus it would seem sensible to examine it for evidence of warming since it covers the entire period of human industrialisation of the planet with its concomitant rise in greenhouse gas concentrations. Various studies suggest that levels of greenhouse gases rose slowly but steadily from 1659 to 1945 and then rose rapidly after that so there should be some temperature signature in the Central England Temperature record to match this.

Since any possible global warming arises from the trapping of solar energy the phenomenon might arguably be expected to

be more apparent if we examine summer temperatures since there is more solar energy to be trapped at that time of year. Thus this study intends to examine the Central England Temperature record of summer temperatures for any pattern of change that may be attributed to anthropogenic global warming (AGW). It will also examine whether the Central England Temperature record has any viability as a proxy for UK summer temperature trends as a whole.

Examination of the data

Figure 1 shows the complete Central England Temperature record of summer average temperatures from 1659 to 2009. The summer average for any year is the arithmetical average of the monthly temperatures for June, July and August. A ten year moving average trendline is also shown.

The typical Central England Temperature summer has an average temperature lying somewhere between 15 oC and 16 oC: the actual average for the full 351-year series is 15.31 oC with a value for one standard deviation of 0.82 C. A summer with an average of over 16 oC could be called “warm” and one over 17 oC could be described as “very warm”. Conversely one below 15 oC could be described as “cool” and a summer below 14 oC could be called “very cool”.

An examination of the record of summer temperatures in the Central England Temperature shows certain features. The period from 1659 to the beginning of the 18th century shows that there was a large number of cool and very cool summers. These became increasingly frequent as the end of the 17th century was approached. These years form part of the period known as the Little Ice Age for obvious reasons. In the 18th century, a pattern of much warmer summers was established. There was a considerable number of warm summers, although no very warm ones. There were relatively few cool summers and only one very cool summer in the entire century.

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Figure 1

Summer Mean Central-England Temperatures, 1659-2009 (°C)

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With the change of century the balance swung again to cooler summers. Although there were two very warm summers in the 19th century, with 1826 being the second warmest in the Central England Temperature record, there was a considerable number of cool summers, and very cool summers appeared on a fairly regular basis.

The 20th century provided something of a rollercoaster for summer temperatures. In the first three decades of the century there were only two warm summers, in 1911 and 1921, and most of the summers were disappointingly cool. By contrast the 1930s, 40s and 50s gave a good number of fine warm summers but the 60s, 70s and 80s saw a return to cooler summers once again. One redeeming year was 1976

which saw the warmest summer in the Central England Temperature record. Since 1989 there has been a pattern of generally improving summers, with very warm summers being experienced in 1995, 2003 and 2006. However since 2006 the three most recent summers have been disappointing with temperatures close to the long term average.

Central England Temperature vs. UK

One further matter to be addressed is whether the Central England Temperature record is of limited use as a climate indicator due to its restricted geographical spread or whether Central England Temperature trends are replicated in other Met Office data, most importantly that for the UK as a whole.

Figure 2

Summer Central-England vs. Whole-UK Temperatures, 1659-2009 (°C)

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Figure 2 shows the trend in average summer temperatures for Central England from 1900 to 2009 compared to the trend for UK summer temperatures from the year 1914 onwards: www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/datasets/Tmean/date/UK.txt. There is an almost perfect match with a calculated correlation of 0.98 for the two graphs. In other words we can confidently use the Central England Temperature record as a proxy for summer temperatures in the UK as a whole back to 1659. On average the UK summer has been 1.49C cooler than the Central England Temperature summer, a figure which stays remarkably consistent, as shown by the small standard deviation of 0.16C. The UK summer is cooler than Central England: the former includes the cooler northern UK.

Analysis of the data

If there is a global warming signal in UK summer temperature data then it would most likely show up by comparing two sets of records as far apart in time as possible to accommodate the greatest possible rise in GHGs. Due to the large amount of “noise” inherent in any temperature record a more valid comparison would be made by examining the average for a range of annual temperatures rather than selecting two single years. Thus, for these reasons, the 18th and 20th centuries have been selected for comparison. Figure 3 shows the summer temperatures for 1701–1800 and 1901–2000 superimposed on the same chart.

Figure 3

Summer 18th century vs. 20th century Central-England Temperatures, 1659-2009 (°C)

Year of relevant century

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Although there were three very warm summers in the latter part of the 20th century it is not at all obvious that 20th century summers were warmer relative to those for the 18th century. In fact the opposite is the case. The average Central England Temperature summer temperature in the 18th century was 15.46 oC while that for the 20th century was 15.35 oC.

Far from being warmer due to assumed global warming, comparison of actual temperature data shows that UK summers in the 20th century were cooler than those of two centuries previously.

Summers in the second half of the 20th century were warmer than those in the first half. This may have been a global warming signal: but the average Central England Temperature summer for 1951–2000, a time when GHG levels were rising steadily, had a value of 15.45 oC which is approximately equal to but still lower than the 18th-century value.

The scattergram, Figure 4, shows clearly that the 20th century had more cool summers than the 18th century and fewer warm ones despite an absence of very warm summers in the 18th century.

Figure 4

18th century vs. 20th century Central-England Temperatures, 1659-2009 (°C)

Year of relevant century

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Also, summer temperatures in the 20th century (standard deviation 0.83 C°) showed greater variability than in the 18th

(0.69 C°), a consequence of greater extremes of heat or cold, and is often exploited as an indicator of climate change.

However, the fundamental issue is that of global warming caused by increasing human emission of GHGs. From the UK temperature data one must conclude that comparing summer temperatures in the 18th and 20th centuries shows absolutely no anthropogenic global warming signal whatsoever.

The intervening 19th century had cooler summers than the 18th or 20th: mean summer Central England Temperature was only 15.19oC (standard deviation 0.86 C°). There were quite a few extreme summers, mostly cold ones, during this century.

The 19th century seems to have been a globally cool time generally. This has exaggerated the global warming trend seen in data such as the HadCRUT3v global temperature record www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3vgl.txt, as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5

Monthly HadCRUT3v Global Temperature Record, 1850-2009 (°C)

Because of the small global number of weather stations prior to 1880 the record was extremely “noisy”, but it is apparent that the 19th-century climate was cool. This cool period lasted until 1910, when there was a general 20th-century warming. Would it have been the case, based on the UK evidence, that a global record would have shown a generally warmer 18th century and that this in turn would have reduced concerns about anthropogenic global warming?

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Letting the real-world data speak out

EFORE we began producing the Monthly CO2 Reports, it was easy for “global warming” profiteers to pretend, and repeatedly to state, that “global warming” is “getting worse”,

and that the climate is changing “faster than expected”. Now they are unable to get away with such falsehoods as easily as before. The centerpieces of our monthly series of graphs showing what is happening in the real world are our CO2 and temperature graphs, now regarded as the definitive standard worldwide. Our CO2 concentration graphs show changes in real-world CO2 concentration as measured by monitoring stations worldwide and compiled by NOAA. We also calculate and display the least-squares linear-regression trend on the real-world data. Because this trend has been very close to a straight line since late 2001, it is the best guide to future CO2 concentration. We also display the range of UN projections for CO2 concentration, based on its A2 “business as usual” scenario – the one that comes closest to reality at present. The one difference is that, for clarity, we zero the UN’s projections to the start-point of the linear regression trend on the real-world data. The UN predicts that, this century, CO2 concentration will rise exponentially – at an ever-increasing rate – towards 836 [730, 1020] parts per million by volume in 2100. In reality, however, for eight years CO2 concentration has been trending in a straight line towards just 575 ppmv by 2100. If this linear trend continues, all of the UN’s predictions for 21st-century warming will have to be halved.

Our global-temperature graphs show changes in real-world temperature at or near the Earth’s surface. Each temperature graph represents the mean of two satellite datasets: the monthly lower-troposphere anomalies from the satellites of Remote Sensing Systems, Inc., and of the University of Alabama at Huntsville. We do not use the Hadley/CRU or NCDC/GISS datasets: the Climate-gate scandal has shown these to be mere science fiction. On each graph, the anomalies are zeroed to the least element in the dataset. For clarity, the IPCC’s range of predictions is zeroed to the start-point of the least-squares linear-regression trend on the real-world data. Since late 2001, global temperature has been falling fast. To preserve consistency with the IPCC’s published formulae for evaluating climate sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 enrichment, the IPCC’s projections are evaluated directly from its projected exponential growth in CO2 concentration using the IPCC’s own logarithmic formula for equilibrium temperature change, yielding a net-linear range of projections. Equilibrium change – final temperature response when the climate has settled down after an external perturbation – is greater than the transient change predicted by the UN. However, on the A2 scenario that we use, the difference by 2100 is just 0.5 C° (0.9 F°). Therefore, when the UN and other scientists try to maintain that global warming “in the pipeline” will go on for “thousands of years”, just 0.5 C° of additional warming is all that they are talking about.

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SPPI Monthly CO2 Report : : Our Graphs Your Monthly Update On What Is Really Happening With The Climate

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C O2 concentr ation r ises, but not at the pr edicted ever -incr easing r ate

CO2 is rising in a straight line, well below the IPCC’s projected range (pale blue region). The deseasonalized real-world data are shown as a thick, dark-blue line overlaid on the least-squares linear-regression trend. There is no sign of the exponential (i.e. ever-accelerating) rate of growth the IPCC predicts. Indeed, in recent months the effects of worldwide recession appear to be evident in the data. Data source: NOAA.

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IPCC predicts rapid, exponential CO2 growth that is not occurring

Observed CO2 growth is linear, and is also well below the exponential-growth curves (bounding the pale blue region) predicted by the IPCC in its 2007 report. If CO2 continues on its present path, the IPCC’s central temperature projection for the year 2100 must be halved. Data source: NOAA.

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The 29-year global warming trend is just 2.5 °F (1.4 °C) per century

Global temperature for the past 30 years has been undershooting the IPCC’s currently-predicted warming rates (pink region). The warming trend (thick red line) has been rising at well below half of the IPCC’s central estimate. Data source: SPPI index, compiled from RSS, and UAH. SPPI no longer uses any terrestrial-temperature datasets, because they have become near-universally discredited as unreliable.

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Almost a decade and a half with no statistically-significant warming

Since the beginning of 1995, there has been no statistically-significant “global warming”. The warming over this period would only be significant if the temperature at the end of the period were high enough to be clear of the “error-bars” (not shown in this graph) that reflect the uncertainties in measuring global mean surface temperature accurately. Source: SPPI global temperature index.

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Almost nine years’ global cooling at 2.2 F° (1.2 C°) / century

For almost nine years, the trend global temperatures has been falling rapidly. The IPCC’s predicted warming path (pink region) bears no relation to the global cooling that has been observed in the 21st century to date. Source: SPPI global temperature index.

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Sea level has not risen significantly in the past four years

Sea level (anomaly in millimetres) is scarcely rising: The average rise in sea level over the past 10,000 years was 4 feet/century. During the 20th century it was 8 inches. In the past four years, sea level has scarcely risen at all. As recently as 2001, the IPCC had predicted that sea level might rise as much as 3 ft in the 21st century. However, this maximum was cut by more than one-third to less than 2 feet in the IPCC’s 2007 report. Moerner (2004) says sea level will rise about 8 inches in the 21st century. Mr. Justice Burton, in the UK High Court, bluntly commented on Al Gore’s predicted 20ft sea-level rise as follows: “The Armageddon scenario that he depicts is not based on any scientific view.” A fortiori, James Hansen’s prediction of a 246ft sea-level rise is mere rodomontade. Sea-level rise since the beginning of 2006 has been negligible. See this month's special feature for Professor Niklas Mörner’s latest prediction that sea level this century will rise worldwide by no more than 20 cm (8 inches). Source: University of Colorado, 2009, release 4.

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Hard evidence disproves theory: the ocean is not warming

The 3300 Argo bathythermograph buoys deployed throughout the world’s oceans since late in 2003 have shown a slight cooling of the oceans (anomaly in Celsius degrees: left scale) over the past five years, directly contrary to the official theory that any “global warming” not showing in the atmosphere would definitely show up in the first 400 fathoms of the world’s oceans, where at least 80% of any surplus heat would be stored. Source: ARGO project, June 2009.

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Arctic sea-ice extent remains within the 10-year normal range ...

Arctic sea ice extent (millions of square kilometers: left scale): The red curve shows that the extent of sea ice in the Arctic is now comfortably within the range that has been normal over the past decade. In 2005, 2007, and 2008, sea-ice extent during the September low season was below the 30-year minimum. However, the presence of more multi-year ice this year prevented sea ice from declining as far this year. Arctic summer sea ice covered its least extent in 30 years during the late summer of 2007. However, NASA has attributed that sudden decline to unusual poleward movements of heat transported by currents and winds: the Arctic climate has long been known to be volatile. The decline cannot have been caused by “global warming”, because, as the SPPI Global Temperature Index shows, there has been a rapid cooling globally during the past seven and a half years – a cooling that applies to the oceans as well as to the atmosphere. At almost the same moment as summer sea-ice extent reached its 30-year minimum in the Arctic, sea-ice extent in the Antarctic reached its 30-year maximum, though the latter event was very much less widely reported in the media than the former. Source: IARC JAXA, Japan, November 2009.

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... and summer minimum sea-ice extent has grown 24% in 2 years

Arctic summer sea-ice extent (purple) has increased in each of the past two years, and is very close to the mean for the past decade. Since there has been no statistically-significant “global warming” since 1995, and since the decline in summer sea-ice extent has occurred only in the past five years, the decline that occurred in 2007 cannot be attributed to “global warming”. A paper by NASA in 2008 attributed the 2007 summer sea-ice minimum to unusual poleward winds and currents bringing warm weather up from the tropics. A few weeks after the Arctic sea-ice minimum, there extent of Antarctic sea ice reached a 30-year maximum. The Arctic was in fact 2-3 F° warmer in the 1930s and early 1940s than it is today. A recent paper suggesting that the Arctic is now warmer than at any time for 2000 years is based on the same defective data, and is by the same authors, as the UN’s attempt to abolish the medieval warm period in its 2001 report. In fact, for most of the past 10,000 years the world – and by implication the Arctic – was appreciably warmer than it is today. One of the authors of that report had previously told a fellow-researcher, “We have to abolish the medieval warm period.” However, papers by more than 700 scientists from more than 400 institutions in more than 40 countries over more than 20 years establish that the medieval warm period was real, was global, and was warmer than the present. Source: University of Illinois, 15 September 2009.

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Antarctic sea-ice extent has been rising gently for 30 years

Antarctic sea-ice extent (anomaly from 1979-2000 mean, millions of km2: left scale) shows a gentle but definite uptrend over the past 30 years. The peak extent, which occurred late in 2007, followed shortly after the decline in Arctic sea ice in late summer that year. In the summer of 2009, less Antarctic sea-ice melted than since records began 30 years previously, confirming that global warming is not occurring. Source: University of Illinois, November 2009.

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The regular “heartbeat” of global sea-ice extent: steady for 30 years

Planetary cardiogram showing global sea-ice area (millions of square kilometers: left scale): There has been a very slight decline in the trend (red) of global sea-ice extent over the decades, chiefly attributable to loss of sea ice in the Arctic during the summer, which was well below the mean in 2007, with some recovery in 2008 and a further recovery in 2009. However, the 2008 peak sea-ice extent was exactly on the 1979-2000 mean, and current sea-ice extent is somewhat below the 1979-2000 mean. The decline in summer sea-ice extent in the Arctic, reflected in the global sea-ice anomalies over most of the past eight years, runs counter to the pronounced global atmospheric cooling trend over the same period, suggesting that the cause of the regional sea-ice loss cannot have been “global warming”. Seabed volcanic activity recently reported in the Greenland/Iceland gap, with seabed temperatures of up to 574 °F, may have contributed to the loss of Arctic sea-ice. Source: University of Illinois, November 2009.

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El-Niño-driven uptick lifts hurricane activity above its historic low

“’Urricanes ’ardly hever ’appen”, as Eliza Doolittle sang in “My Fair Lady”. Hurricanes, typhoons, and other tropical cyclones have declined recently, but now show a small recent uptick, probably caused by the unusual transition from la Niña to el Niño conditions this year. Global activity of intense tropical storms is measured using a two-year running sum, the Accumulated Cyclone Energy Index, now standing at almost its least value in 30 years in the Northern Hemisphere, and also globally. The graph shows the 24-month running sum of tropical-cyclone energy for the entire globe (top) and the Northern Hemisphere only (green). The difference between the two time series is the Southern Hemisphere total. Data are shown from June 1979 to October 2009. Intensity estimates of southern-hemisphere cyclones are often missing before the graph’s start-date. Source: Ryan Maue, November 2009.

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L andfalling Philippine tor nadoes: a falling tr end since 1990

The number of typhoons making landfall in the Philippines, 1902-2005 (excluding the Second World War) shows no trend until 1990 and a falling trend thereafter. Source: Kubota, H. and Chan, J.C.L. 2009. Interdecadal variability of tropical cyclone landfall in the Philippines from 1902 to 2005. Geophysical Research Letters 36: 10.1029/2009GL038108.

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Solar activity picks up after its unusually-prolonged minimum

Upper panel: Sunspot numbers (red), for the past two months. Sunspot activity had been less than for 100 years, but is now recovering as the new solar cycle gets under way. Lower panel: Number of days without any visible sunspots during the previous solar minimum (blue) and the present solar minimum (red). During the last ~11-year solar minimum, in September/October 1996, the longest period without sunspots was 37 days, compared with 44 days in March/April 2009 and 51 days in July/August 2009. Source: Jan Alvestad, November 2009.

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The stupefying cost of the Waxman/Markey Climate Bill

This postcard has all the key figures on the Waxman/Markey climate Bill in one place. Bottom line: to prevent the 3.4 C warming projected by the UN for this century under the A2 carbon emissions scenario would take 1360 years even if the Bill were fully implemented, and would cost $250 trillion. Source: SPPI calculations.

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Why cap-and-trade will not change the global climate one iota

A pointless B ill: The Waxman/Markey Bill will cost billions to implement, but will reduce US carbon emissions hardly at all, unless the numerous exceptions in the Bill are implemented, in which event it will not reduce US carbon emissions at all. Source: www.breakthrough.org.

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The Waxman/Markey Climate Bill will scarcely affect temperatures

T emper atur e change pr edicted by the UN, and (dotted line) adjusted to reflect the negligible impact of the Waxman/Markey Climate Bill, which might cut temperatures by 0.2-0.02 F by 2100, at a cost of $18 trillion. Source: Chip Knappenberger: cost estimates $180 bn/year from the White House.

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The Waxman/Markey Climate Bill will scarcely affect sea level

Sea-level change pr edicted by the UN, and (dotted line) adjusted to reflect the negligible impact of the Waxman/Markey Climate Bill, which might cut sea-level by less than half an in by 2100, at a cost of $18 trillion. Source: Chip Knappenberger: cost estimates $180 bn/year from the White House.

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Simple proof that ‘global warming’ is not manmade DR. DAVID EVANS, formerly a senior programmer in the Australian Government’s carbon-accounting office, resigned

when he was compelled to attend a lecture at which he was told there had never been a medieval warm period. Even the UN’s climate panel, in its 1990 report (below left) showed that the warm period existed and was appreciably warmer than the present. But by 2001 (below right), the IPCC, by mere statistical prestidigitation, had purported to abolish the it. Also, by plotting temperature-proxy data (mostly from tree-rings) only from the Northern Hemisphere, the IPCC was able to exaggerate 20th-century “global warming” by 50% (red data, below right). These two statistical manipulations allowed it to pretend that today’s temperatures are warmer than at any time in the past 1000 years and are, by implication, exceptional. Dr. Evans, after a recent re-examination of the data, has communicated to us this short, simple, elegant proof that “global warming”, such as it was (for there has been none this millennium) cannot have been chiefly manmade. His timely result demonstrates why the Climategate revelations are so important: they reveal how the data manipulation was covered up.

Now you see it ... (IPCC, 1990)

... now you don’t! (IPCC, 2001)

SPPI Monthly CO2 Report : : Science Focus How We Know CO2 Is Only A Bit-Part Player

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OW that Climategate has buried the fraudulent hockey stick for good, it is easily to prove that global warming is not man-made: just compare the timing of our carbon dioxide emissions with the timing of global warming. Emissions of carbon dioxide by humans are easy to estimate from our consumption of coal, oil, and natural gas, and production of cement:

Figure 1: Carbon emissions by humans (million metric tons of carbon). Source: Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center.

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The vast bulk of human emissions occurred after 1945, during post-WWII industrialization. Half of all human consumption of fossil fuels and cement production has occurred since the mid 1970s.

Global temperature proxies (sediments, boreholes, pollen, oxygen-18, stalagmites, magnesium to calcium ratios, algae, cave formation, etc. over a wide geographical range) show a warming trend starting around 1700, with warming and cooling periods about the trend:

Figure 2: Mean global temperature reconstruction based on 18 non-tree-ring proxies, to 1935. Only 11 proxies cover the period after 1935, dotted line. Sources 1, 2, 3, 4: Dr Craig Loehle, National Council for Air and Stream Improvement.

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Global thermometer records are more reliable and precise, but only go back to 1880. They confirm that the warming trend extends back to at least 1880, and show warming and cooling periods of about thirty years in each direction:

Figure 3: The global instrumental temperature record to 2000, in the yellow box. Simply draw a trend line through the data. In 2009 we are where the green arrow points. Source: Dr Syun-Ichi Akasofu, International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks.

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The timing is all wrong for the theory of manmade global warming:

Temperature increases started in 1700, and the underlying rate of increase has been roughly steady (though there have been warming and cooling fluctuations around the trend).

Human emissions of carbon dioxide were negligible before 1850, and really only took off after 1945.

If human emissions of carbon dioxide caused global warming, then there would be massive and accelerating global warming after 1945 and almost no global warming before 1945. Obviously this is not the case.

Conclusions

There is almost no relationship between human emissions and global temperature, so global warming is not mainly due to human emissions of carbon dioxide. Something other than human emissions caused the global warming before 1850. The steadiness of the underlying temperature trend since 1700 suggests that whatever caused the warming before 1850 is still causing warming, and that the effect of human emissions of carbon dioxide is relatively insignificant.

Notes

1. This result only proves that the recent global warming was not mainly due to human emissions of carbon dioxide. It does not rule out all possible man-made influences, but since the popular debate is overwhelmingly about the role of our carbon dioxide emissions this simplification is justifiable in this context.

2. Obviously the proxy global temperature in Figure 2 is deadly to the idea of man-made global warming. The alarmists tried to replace Figure 2 with their hockey stick graph, which shows global temperatures falling slightly since 1000 AD then suddenly increasing from 1910. The hockey stick graph does not show the little ice age or the medieval warm period—it reckons that the world was about 0.8°C cooler than present in the medieval period. The hockey stick graph is now firmly established as a fraud:

o Last week’s Climategate leaks include computer code that shows blatant fudging to create the hockey stick shape (see here).(By the way, the leaked documents and emails were carefully selected, which would have taken a considerable time. Hackers quickly grab what they can before being detected, so it probably wasn’t a hack.)

o Steve McIntyre showed that the original hockey stick graph created by Michael Mann was invalid, based on cherry picked data and biased statistical processing (if you feed stock price data into the software used to create the graph, a hockey stick usually emerges). The US Congress appointed a committee led by Edward Wegman to investigate, and it concluded “Overall, our committee believes that Mann’s assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis.”

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o Another hockey stick graph was constructed from tree ring data by Briffa in 1995. When his data was finally divulged in late 2009 after years of denied requests, it was found that his graph essentially relied on one freakish tree in the Yamal peninsula of northern Russia.

o The medieval warm period is real, according to 768 individual scientists from 454 separate research institutions in 42 different countries, and hundreds of peer-reviewed papers. At www.co2science.org there is a map of the world showing how much hotter than today it was in many various parts of the world, according to these studies—there are many warmer results (and a very few cooler results), in every continent except Australia (which had no studies).

o It is easily verifiable that it was a lot colder in the 1700s. Example 1: During the 1700s the Thames River in London would regularly freeze over, and people would hold fairs on the ice—the last time the Thames froze over was 1804. Example 2: There are many reports of it being so cold in Europe in the 1700s that animals in barns would die of cold—which never happens any more. The little ice age is also real.

o The IPCC prominently displayed the hockey stick diagram six times, large, and at full scale in their Third Assessment Report (2001), and the IPCC adopted the hockey stick graph into their logo. Then it was revealed as a fraud by McIntyre and Wegman. The Fourth Assessment Report (2007) omits any reference to the hockey stick graph, and the IPCC dropped the hockey stick graph from their logo.

3. Now that ClimateGate has proven the hockey stick is a fraud beyond any credibility, perhaps the alarmists will finally have the decency to admit that Figure 2 is as good a picture of the past as we have. The conclusions of the proof above are then obvious and undeniable: human emissions of carbon dioxide are not the main cause of global warming.

4. To quote the hockey stick graph—and thereby deny the temperature reconstruction in Figure 2, the medieval warm period, and the little ice age—is anti-science fraud. But that’s what the alarmists had to do to prevent the obvious truth of the proof above.

5. Even without Figure 2, the global thermometer record in Figure 3 is sufficient to cast very considerable doubt on the idea that human emissions of carbon dioxide cause global warming: the temperature rise from 1880 to 1950 is roughly the same as that from 1950 to the present, but the human emissions were very different. In a similar vein, there has been a 29% increase in carbon dioxide emissions since 2000 but satellites show that the global temperature has fallen since then.

6. Tree rings are easy to use as a temperature proxy, but are unreliable because tree growth varies strongly in response to many factors other than temperature (such as water, carbon dioxide, fertilizer, tree age), because the width of tree ring to temperature is not linear, and because trees adapt genetically to climate changes and change basic properties like size and root-to-shoot ratio. See here (p. 1050). The temperature reconstruction in Figure 2 simply combines all the best non-tree-ring data that is available.

Dr. David Evans

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Your ‘global-warming’ ready reckoner

Here is a step-by-step, do-it-yourself ready-reckoner which will let you use a pocket calculator to make your own instant estimate of global temperature change in response to increases in atmospheric CO2 concentration.

STEP 1: Decide how far into the future you want your forecast to go, and estimate how much CO2 will be in the atmosphere at that date. Example: Let us do a forecast to 2100. The Monthly CO2 Report charts show CO2 rising to C = 575 parts per million by the end of the century, compared with B = 385 parts per million in late 2008.

STEP 2: Next, work out the proportionate increase C/B in CO2 concentration. In our example, C/B = 575/385 = 1.49.

STEP 3: Take the natural logarithm ln(C/B) of the proportionate increase. If you have a scientific calculator, find the natural logarithm directly using the “ln” button. If not, look up the logarithm in the table below. In our example, ln 1.49 = 0.40.

n 1.05 1.10 1.15 1.20 1.25 1.30 1.35 1.40 1.45 1.50 1.55 1.60 1.65 1.70 1.75 1.80 1.85 1.90 1.95 2.00 ln 0.05 0.10 0.14 0.18 0.22 0.26 0.30 0.34 0.37 0.41 0.44 0.47 0.50 0.53 0.56 0.59 0.62 0.64 0.67 0.69 n 2.05 2.10 2.15 2.20 2.25 2.30 2.35 2.40 2.45 2.50 2.55 2.60 2.65 2.70 2.75 2.80 2.85 2.90 2.95 3.00 ln 0.72 0.74 0.77 0.79 0.81 0.83 0.85 0.88 0.90 0.92 0/94 0.96 0.97 0.99 1.01 1.03 1.05 1.06 1.08 1.10

STEP 4: Choose a climate sensitivity coefficient c from the table below –

Coefficient c ... SPPI minimum SPPI central SPPI maximum IPCC minimum IPCC central IPCC maximum ... for C° 0.7 1.4 2.1 2.9 4.7 6.5 ... for F° 1.25 2.50 3.75 5.25 8.5 11.75

STEP 5: Find the temperature change ΔT by multiplying the natural logarithm of the proportionate increase in CO2 concentration by your climate sensitivity coefficient. In our example, we’ll chose the SPPI central estimate c = 2.50 F. Then –

ΔT = c ln(C/B) = 2.50 x 0.40 = 1.0 F°, your predicted manmade warming to 2100. It’s as simple as that!

SPPI Monthly CO2 Report : : Your Zone How to calculate the effect of CO2 on temperature for yourself

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Why cutting carbon emissions can never be cost-effective

A very simple calculation demonstrates definitively and conclusively that any attempt to address the imagined (and imaginary) “problem” of “global warming” is doomed not to be cost-effective. NOAA’s global CO2 concentration record shows 388 parts per million by volume in the atmosphere in 2009/10. Throughout this millennium CO2 concentration has been rising in a straight line at 2ppmv/year, as our CO2 concentration graphs show every month. How much warming will this 2 ppmv/year increase cause? Using the formula for the UN’s implicit central estimate of CO2’s warming effect, taken from our Ready Reckoner, we can work this out thus: the warming, in Celsius degrees, is 4.7 times the Naperian logarithm of [(388+2)/388], which works out as 0.024 C° per year, or less than one-fortieth of a Celsius degree. So we should have to shut down the entire global carbon economy for 41 years, without any right to use an auto, train, or plane, to prevent just 1 Celsius degree of warming. However, the UN has exaggerated CO2’s warming effect at least fourfold, so make that 160 years. Closing the entire carbon economy would in effect close the entire global economy. And all this for the sake of a non-solution to a non-problem.

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The Monthly CO2 Report summarizes key recent scientific papers, selected from those featured weekly at www.co2science.org, that

significantly add to our understanding of the climate question. This month we review papers about aerosols, net primary productivity in the Amazon, ocean acidification, and the contrasting health effects of cold and warm weather. Our final paper gives evidence that the Middle Ages were warmer than today.

Thirty-Second Summary

We do not know the mean sulfate aerosol forcing component of earth's top-of-the-atmosphere radiative budget to within anything

better than ± 100%. CO2 fertilization overwhelms the impacts of temperature and precipitation changes projected by most global climate models,

resulting in higher net primary production in the Amazon by the end of the century. Contrary to the expectations of scientists, fish grown in seawater with high CO2, and hence lower pH and aragonite saturation,

were significantly larger than fish grown under normal present-day CO2 conditions. An episode of extreme cold can shave an entire decade off one's life, while an episode of extreme warmth typically hastens death by

no more than a few weeks. Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 771 individual scientists from 458 separate research

institutions in 42 different countries in the CO2Science Medieval Warm Period Project database ... and counting! View an interactive map here: http://www.co2science.org/data/timemap/mwpmap.html.

Aerosol Radiative Forcing of Climate

Haerter, J.O., Roeckner, E., Tomassini, L. and von Storch, J.-S. 2009. Parametric uncertainty effects on aerosol radiative forcing. Geophysical Research Letters 36: 10.1029/2009GL039050.

Haerter et al. (2009) write that future projections of climate "have been -- for a given climate model -- derived using a 'standard' set of cloud parameters that produce realistic present-day climate." However, they say "there may exist another set of parameters that produces a similar present-day climate but is more appropriate for the description of climate change," and that "due to the high sensitivity of aerosol forcing (F) to cloud parameters, the climate projection with this set of parameters could be notably different from that obtained from the standard set of

SPPI Monthly CO2 Report : : New Science BREAKING NEWS IN THE JOURNALS, FROM www.co2science.org

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parameters, even though the present-day climate is reproduced adequately," which state of affairs suggests that replication of the present-day climate is no assurance that a climate model will accurately portray earth's climate at some future time. To get a better idea of the magnitude of uncertainty associated with this conundrum, Haerter et al. used the ECHAM5 atmospheric general circulation model (GCM), which includes parameterizations of direct and first indirect aerosol effects, to see what degree of variability in F results from reasonable uncertainties associated with seven different cloud parameters: the entrainment rate for shallow convection, the entrainment rate for penetrative convection, the cloud mass flux above the non-buoyancy level, the correction to asymmetry parameter for ice clouds, the inhomogeneity parameter for liquid clouds, the inhomogeneity parameter for ice clouds, and the conversion efficiency from cloud water to precipitation. Results indicated that "the uncertainty due to a single one of these parameters can be as large as 0.5 W/m2," and that "the uncertainty due to combinations of these parameters can reach more than 1 W/m2." As for their significance, they say that "these numbers should be compared with the sulfate aerosol forcing of -1.9 W/m2 for the year 2000, obtained using the default values of the parameters." With respect to these parametric uncertainties, we apparently do not know the mean sulfate aerosol forcing component of earth's top-of-the-atmosphere radiative budget to within anything better than ± 50%. In addition, Haerter et al. note that structural uncertainties, such as "uncertainties in aerosol sources, representation of aerosols in models, parameterizations that relate aerosols and cloud droplets to simulate the indirect aerosol effect, and in cloud schemes" lead to an overall uncertainty in F of approximately ± 43%, as per the most recent IPCC estimates. In reality, therefore, we probably do not know the current atmosphere's aerosol radiative forcing to anything better that ± 100%, which does not engender confidence in our ability to simulate earth's climate very far into the future with state-of-the-art climate models. The Fate of Amazonian Forests in a CO2-Enriched and Warmer World

Lapola, D.M., Oyama, M.D. and Nobre, C.A. 2009. Exploring the range of climate biome projections for tropical South America: The role of CO2 fertilization and seasonality. Global Biogeochemical Cycles 23: 10.1029/2008GB003357.

Many are the studies that have evaluated the impacts of greenhouse-gas-induced global warming on forest dynamics in tropical South America, the results of which generally portend, in the words of the authors, "long-term replacement by drier biomes such as tropical savanna, C4 grasslands or even desert." Lapola et al. expand this somewhat myopic view by using a potential vegetation model (CPTEC-PVM2) "to analyze biome distribution in tropical South America under a range of climate projections," while taking into consideration the aerial fertilization effect of atmospheric CO2 enrichment, as well as its transpiration-reducing effect. Results, according to this team of Brazilian and German researchers, reveals that "if the CO2 'fertilization effect' indeed takes place and is maintained in the long term in tropical forests, then it will avoid biome shifts in Amazonia in most of the climate scenarios, even if the effect of CO2 fertilization is halved [italics added]." In fact, they say that the CO2 fertilization effect, "when fully or half considered, overwhelms

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[italics added] the impacts arising from temperature (in agreement with Lloyd and Farquhar, 2008) and even some of the precipitation changes projected by most of the global climate models, resulting in higher net primary production by the end of the century." Without the biological benefits provided by the ongoing rise in the air's CO2 content, Lapola et al. conclude "there must be substantial biome shifts in the region, including substitution of the Amazonian forest by savanna," but that with these benefits, "most of Amazonia would remain the same" as it is today. Reference Lloyd, J. and Farquhar, G.D. 2008. Effects of rising temperatures and [CO2] on the physiology of tropical forest trees. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Series B 363: 1811-1817. Ocean Acidification and the Sagittal Otoliths of Marine Fish

Checkley Jr., D.M., Dickson, A.G., Takahashi, M., Radich, J.A., Eisenkolb, N. and Asch, R. 2009. Elevated CO2 enhances otolith growth in young fish. Science 324: 1683.

Otoliths, to quote the authors of a recent Brevia item in Science (Checkley et al., 2009), "are bony structures used by fish to sense orientation and acceleration and consist of aragonite-protein bilayers," or as the dictionary simply states, they are "small vibrating calcareous particles in ... the ears of some animals, especially of fishes." Noting that atmospheric CO2 enrichment has been calculated, on a purely chemical basis, to decrease the saturation state of carbonate minerals such as aragonite in the world's oceans, the six scientists "hypothesized that otoliths in eggs and larvae reared in seawater with elevated CO2 would grow more slowly than they do in seawater with normal CO2," and to test this hypothesis, they "grew eggs and pre-feeding larvae of white sea bass (Atractoscion nobilis) under a range of CO2 concentrations [380, 993 and 2558 ppm] and measured the size of their sagittal otoliths." These experiments indicated, "contrary to expectations," in the words of Checkley et al., that "the otoliths of fish grown in seawater with high CO2, and hence lower pH and aragonite saturation, were significantly larger than those of fish grown under simulations of present-day conditions." More specifically, they found that "for 7- to 8-day-old fish grown under 993 and 2558 ppm CO2, the areas of the otoliths were 7 to 9% and 15 to17% larger, respectively, than those of control fish grown under 380 ppm CO2." But how could this be? ... especially since these findings seemingly contradict the well-known laws of chemistry? The answer is to be found in the fact that living creatures can accomplish many things that dead chemistry can't. The marine researchers went on to state, in this regard, that young fish are "able to control the concentration of ions (H+ and Ca2+) ... in the endolymph surrounding the otolith," where "with constant pH, elevated CO2 increases CO3

2- concentration and thus the aragonite saturation state, accelerating formation of otolith aragonite [our italics]." In like manner, but in the case of corals, we contended almost a decade ago (Idso et al., 2000) that coral calcification is much more than a purely physical-chemical process, stating that it is a biologically-driven physical-chemical process, which is something that is much more complicated.

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Enlarging on this statement, we stated that real-world data indicate that the photosynthetic activity of a coral's symbiotic zooxanthellae "is the chief source of energy for the energetically-expensive process of calcification," while further noting that long-term reef calcification rates have generally been observed to rise in direct proportion to increases in rates of reef primary production, which are typically enhanced by increases in the air's CO2 concentration, as is indicated by many of the studies described in the recent review of the subject by Idso (2009). Therefore, we suggested that coral calcification -- just like otolith calcification -- should actually increase as the atmosphere's CO2 content rises, which has also been demonstrated to be the case in a number of the studies reviewed by Idso (2009), as well as in additional studies for which we have written and posted reviews in our Subject Index under the general heading of Calcification. Viewed in this light, the findings of Checkley et al. are seen to be in no way strange or unusual, and should not have been deemed "contrary to expectations." To our way of thinking, at least, they are exactly what we would have expected to see. References Idso, C.D. 2009. CO2, Global Warming and Coral Reefs: Prospects for the Future. Vales Lake Publishing, Pueblo West, Colorado, USA. Idso, S.B., Idso, C.D. and Idso, K.E. 2000. CO2, global warming and coral reefs: Prospects for the future. Technology 7S: 71-94. Extreme Heat vs. Extreme Cold: Which is the Greatest Killer?

Deschenes, O. and Moretti, E. 2009. Extreme weather events, mortality, and migration. The Review of Economics and Statistics 91:659-681. Hypocrisy in high places is nothing new; but the extent to which it pervades the Climategate Culture - which gave us the hockeystick history of 20th-century global warming - knows no bounds. Hard on the heels of recent revelations of the behind-the-scenes machinations that led to the IPCC's contending that the current level of earth's warmth is the most extreme of the past millennium, we are being told by Associated Press "science" writer Seth Borenstein (25 November 2009) that "slashing carbon dioxide emissions could save millions of lives." And in doing so, he quotes U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius as saying that "relying on fossil fuels leads to unhealthy lifestyles, increasing our chances for getting sick and in some cases takes years from our lives." Well, if you're talking about "cook stoves that burn dung, charcoal and other polluting fuels in the developing world," as Seth Borenstein reports others are doing in producing their prognoses for the future, you're probably right. But that has absolutely nothing to do with the proper usage of coal, gas and oil. In fact, any warming that might result from the burning of those fuels would likely lead to a significant lengthening of human life. In an impressive study recently published in The Review of Economics and Statistics, for example, Deschenes and Moretti (2009) analyze the relationship between weather and mortality, based on "data that include the universe of deaths in the United States over the period 1972-1988," wherein they "match each death to weather conditions on the day of death and in the county of occurrence," which "high-frequency data and the fine geographical detail," as they write, allow them "to estimate with precision the effect of cold and hot temperature shocks on mortality, as well as the dynamics of such effects," most notably, the existence or non-existence of a "harvesting effect," whereby the temperature-induced deaths either are or are not subsequently followed by a drop in the normal death rate, which could either fully or partially compensate for the prior extreme temperature-induced deaths. So what did they find?

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The two researchers say their results "point to widely different impacts of cold and hot temperatures on mortality." In the later case, they discovered that "hot temperature shocks are indeed associated with a large and immediate spike in mortality in the days of the heat wave," but that "almost all of this excess mortality is explained by near-term displacement," so that "in the weeks that follow a heat wave, we find a marked decline in mortality hazard, which completely offsets the increase during the days of the heat wave," such that "there is virtually no lasting impact of heat waves on mortality [italics added]." In the case of cold temperature days, they also found "an immediate spike in mortality in the days of the cold wave," but they report that "there is no offsetting decline in the weeks that follow," so that "the cumulative effect of one day of extreme cold temperature during a thirty-day window is an increase in daily mortality by as much as 10% [italics added]." In addition, they say that "this impact of cold weather on mortality is significantly larger for females than for males," but that "for both genders, the effect is mostly attributable to increased mortality due to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases." In further discussing their findings, Deschenes and Moretti state that "the aggregate magnitude of the impact of extreme cold on mortality in the United States is large," noting that it "roughly corresponds to 0.8% of average annual deaths in the United States during the sample period." And they estimate that "the average person who died because of cold temperature exposure lost in excess of ten years of potential life [italics added]," whereas the average person who died because of hot temperature exposure likely lost no more than a few days or weeks of life. Hence, it is clear that climate-alarmist concerns about temperature-related deaths are wildly misplaced, and that halting global warming - if it could ever be done - would lead to more thermal-related deaths, because continued warming, which is predicted to be greatest in earth's coldest regions, would lead to fewer such fatalities. Interestingly, the two scientists report that many people in the United States have actually taken advantage of these evident facts by moving "from cold northeastern states to warm southwestern states." Based on their findings, for example, they calculate that "each year 4,600 deaths are delayed by the changing exposure to cold temperature due to mobility," and that "3% to 7% of the gains in longevity experienced by the U.S. population over the past three decades are due to the secular movement toward warmer states in the West and the South, away from the colder states in the North." It's really a no-brainer. An episode of extreme cold can shave an entire decade off one's life, while an episode of extreme warmth typically hastens death by no more than a few weeks. If you love life, therefore, you may want to reconsider the so-called "morality" of the world's climate-alarmist's perverse prescription for planetary health. For more information on this important subject, we suggest that you see the most recent publication (Climate Change Reconsidered) of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change. If Borenstein were a real science writer, he would check out the findings of the voluminous body of peer-reviewed scientific literature on this and many other related subjects that is reported there. To simply ignore the other side of the issue, especially in a "news" story, must surely come close to bordering on fraud. But we guess that must be the defining characteristic of the Climategate Culture.

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The Middle Ages were warmer than today: Laguna Aculeo, Central Chile

von Gunten, L., Grosjean, M., Rein, B., Urrutia, R. and Appleby, P. 2009. A quantitative high-resolution summer temperature reconstruction based on sedimentary pigments from Laguna Aculeo, central Chile, back to AD 850. The Holocene 19: 873-881.

Von Gunten et al. developed a continuous high-resolution austral summer (Dec-Feb) temperature reconstruction based on chloropigments derived from algae and phototrophic bacteria in sediment cores retrieved from Laguna Aculeo, central Chile (33°50'S, 70°54'W) in 2005 that extended back to AD 850. This work provided, in their words, "quantitative evidence for the presence of a Medieval Climate Anomaly (in this case, warm summers between AD 1150 and 1350; ΔT = +0.27 to +0.37°C with respect to 20th century) and a very cool period synchronous to the 'Little Ice Age' starting with a sharp drop between AD 1350 and AD 1400 (trend –0.3 C°/decade) followed by constantly cool (ΔT = –0.70 to –0.90°C with respect to 20th century) summers until AD 1750." Their graph shows the peak warmth of the Current Warm Period occurred in the late 1940s. Since then, temperatures have declined and then risen, but not to the warmth experienced earlier in the century. Peak warmth of the medieval warm period is ~0.5 C° higher than that recorded for the past two decades of the 20th century, which climate alarmists say was the warmest of the past 1000 or more years. Hence, it is this latter period to which we compare the peak warmth of the medieval warm period.

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Middle Ages: real, global, warmer than today

The Climategate emails reveal some of the tricks the IPCC’s leading “scientists” used in an attempt falsely to abolish the Medieval Warm Period, so that they could pretend that today’s temperatures are warmer than at any time in the past 1300 years. However, this graph from www.science-skeptical.de, a German website, shows graphs from scientific papers that examined proxy temperature data from all parts of the world. Visit the ScienceSkeptical.de website for an interactive version of the graph.

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