Proper climate scientists with PhDs in the subject and everything say they have “debunked” a climate change “myth” which is commonly repeated on the internet. The myth in question is the idea that global warming is causing an increase in the number of tropical cyclones/hurricanes. Certainly there’s plenty of support among bloggers for that idea:

“Global warming and the future of storms … hurricanes will become more frequent” – The Guardian, “Climate Consensus”

“The North Atlantic Ocean Basin has been in a more active period of tropical cyclones since 1995” – Climate Central

“Hurricane Sandy is an example of the extreme weather symptomatic of continued climate change, as storms continue to become more frequent” – Greenpeace

“The last decade has seen an average of 17 hurricanes and tropical storms in the Atlantic – earlier in the century, half that number were recorded” – BBC

But it’s not true, according to Professor Stefan Grab and postdoc researcher Jennifer Fitchett of Witwatersrand university in South Africa. The two scientists write:

By analysing three storm track records spanning periods of 66–161 years, we establish that much of the perceived change in storm numbers can be attributed to improvements in storm detection methods over the past century.

The new study is published in the International Journal of Climatology. The “debunk” and “myth” quotes are from a Witwatersrand uni announcement highlighting that research and another paper by Fitchett, which suggests that winter frosts in South Africa are set to become more damaging. ®

Read more from The Register here.

 

Several decades ago, a then-Prime Minister of Canada used the F-expletive to describe his displeasure with a political opponent. The official transcript used the term “Fuddle-Duddle” instead. It seems that much of the continent is currently stuck in deep freeze with no end in sight. So, is it permissible to use that term for the weather?

Polar Vortex and Beer Gardens

The weather people blame it on the Polar Vortex. It keeps all that Arctic air nicely on top of the North American land mass. In contrast to us, the Germans are missing out on winter this year. In Munich, Bavaria, the people are enjoying cool steins in the city’s beer gardens. What a hardship!

Climate Depot

The Climate Depot website reported on Feb. 25, 2014 on the testimony before the U.S. Senate Environment & Public Works Committee by Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore. Inter alia Moore stated “The fact that we had both higher temperatures and an ice age at a time when CO2 emissions were 10 times higher than they are today fundamentally contradicts the certainty that human-caused CO2 emissions are the main cause of global warming.”

Mother Nature did her best to drive home his point by providing a frigid “climate” for the day. What a nice gesture! But it must also be said that what is happening outside on any given day is the “weather” whereas climate is measured in decades and centuries.

Empty claim by lawyer of climate data fraudster, Michael Mann paints a picture of desperation as SLAPP suit against Dr Tim Ball flunks. Junk scientist left with nowhere to hide secret faked ‘hockey stick’ graph computer code after hard-hitting recent article. On his Facebook page Mann yesterday posted his lawyer, Roger McConchie’s, tame rebuttal to my recent article:

          “The Mann lawsuit is currently in the discovery phase, with further examinations for discovery (depositions) of the defendants to be scheduled shortly, following which I will either set the action for trial by jury in the usual manner, or bring a summary trial application on behalf of Dr. Mann for damages and injunctive relief.”

Here’s why that’s pure attorney flim-flam. Mann will not dare go to trial because to do so would require he surrender as evidence his hidden metadata (more on that below). To let a jury see that statistical chicanery would prove Dr Ball correctly adduced that Mann “belongs in the state pen, not Penn State!” As such, egotistical Mann’s trumped up case is unwinnable.

As Penn. State’s junk climate scientist Michael Mann sees his SLAPP lawsuit against climatologist Dr Tim Ball expensively unravel in the Vancouver court, we provide readers with an authoritative non-technical summary of what a SLAPP suit actually is. Virginia P. Sherlock, Esq. of Littman, Sherlock & Heims explains below:

What is a SLAPP suit?
Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. The term was coined by two University of Denver law professors, George Pring and Penelope Canan, who wrote SLAPPS: Getting Sued for Speaking Out, published in 1996.

SLAPP suits typically involve the environment – for example, local residents who petition government to prevent a real estate development might be sued in a SLAPP suit for interference with the developer’s business interests.

However, SLAPP suits aren’t limited to environmental or development activities. SLAPP suits have been filed in attempts to silence a critic of breast implant technologies, a critic of a major pharmaceuticals company, internet service providers who host public interest blogs.

There is a whole new body of law developing in the CyberSLAPP context, in which developers seek to silence anonymous posters to internet blogs or chat rooms.

Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa — known for his tough questions for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — wants to know why a former researcher at Iowa State University wasn’t prosecuted more vigorously after he was found to have deliberately spiked rabbit blood samples in a federally-funded HIV vaccine study.

As Tony Leys of the Des Moines Register reports:

In a pointed letter Monday, the Iowa Republican asked why the culprit, Dong-Pyou Han, only received a three-year ban from participating in federally financed research.

“This seems like a very light penalty for a doctor who purposely tampered with a research trial and directly caused millions of taxpayer dollars to be wasted on fraudulent studies,” Grassley wrote to a senior official of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

 

Dr Pierre R Latour, PSI Vice-Chairman and Professional Chemical Process Control Systems Engineer, registered in California and Texas, is an invited speaker at Thunderbolts Project Electric Universe 2014 Conference: ‘All About Evidence,’ in Albuquerque, New Mexico, March 20 – 24, 2014. He will address the group on’ Engineering Earth’s Thermostat with CO₂?’ Dr Latour will explain why Earth’s temperature is a chemical process system and will present a review of control system engineering of Earth’s thermostat with anthropogenic CO_2. Previously, in 1997 Latour proved the concept would never work in practice because it is an unmeasurable, unobservable and uncontrollable system. In short, CO₂ does not affect temperature; temperature affects CO₂. There are no greenhouse gases in physics. CO₂ is not a pollutant; it is green plant food. Global warming has also stabilized since 1998.

Dr Latour will show his audience that Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Engineering, Economics, History and Ethics are deployed to identify the barriers to designing the thermostat to control Earth’s atmospheric temperature by adjusting its CO₂ input.

Australia’s obdurate pro-green governmental bureaucracy has too long portrayed CO2 as a pollutant in taxpayer-funded literature, contrary to scientific fact. Campaigner and retired epidemiologist, Dr Judy Ryan, has championed objective reality over green spin to demand that the blatant lie that carbon dioxide is a black and polluting gas be expunged. Below, for the edification of concerned readers, we have pleasure in publishing Judy’s entire correspondence in this matter.

BACKGROUND TO THE FORMAL COMPLAINT (No 2013- 502790) TO THE OMBUDSMAN FOR THE INCORRECT PORTRAYAL OF CO2 AS A BLACK POLLUTING GAS BY THE DEPARTMENT FOR THE ENVIRONMENT

The Original  Formal Complaint was lodged against the then Department  for Climate Change (DCC) on 29th August 2013. It had many political and media  entities openly copied in, Students newspapers from all the major universities were also copied in. DCC  had 28 days to respond before  we could exercise our right to take it to the Ombudsman. The elections intervened and  DCC became  the Department of the Environment (DOE). Nobody from DOE contacted us so we took the formal complaint to the Ombudsman  on the 10th October 2013.  Nothing happened for a while, but I was assured over the phone that it was waiting to be attended to.  Time passed, and passed, and passed, until on the  afternoon of the 26th November 2013 I left a message on the Ombudsman’s answering machine, stating that If the matter was not dealt with within the next 48 hours we would lodge it again by public email. The following morning 27th November an officer from the Ombudsman’s office contacted me, deeply apologetic because the original formal complaint to DCC had somehow got lost in the change over of Government.  It’s a bit like “Yes Minister”  We re-resubmitted  the complaint to DOE.

 It was not dealt with satisfactorily  by the DOE officer and we took the complaint to the Ombudsman on 15 January 2014. The Ombudsman rejected it  on 22nd January , but we intend to exercise our right to resubmit the complaint. 

Massive counterclaims, in excess of $10 million, have just been filed against climate scientist Michael Mann after lawyers affirmed that the former golden boy of global warming alarmism had sensationally failed in his exasperating three-year bid to sue skeptic Canadian climatologist, Tim Ball. Door now wide open for criminal investigation into Climategate conspiracy.

Buoyed by Dr Ball’s successes, journalist and free-speech defender, Mark Steyn has promptly decided to likewise countersue Michael Mann for $10 million in response to a similar SLAPP suit filed by the litigious professor from Penn. State University against not just Steyn, but also the National Review, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Rand Simberg. Ball’s countersuit against Mann seeks “exemplary and punitive damages. ” Bishop Hill blog is running extracts of Steyn’s counterclaim, plus link.

Mann’s chief undoing in all such lawsuits is highlighted in a quote in Steyn’s latest counterclaim:

“Plaintiff continues to evade the one action that might definitively establish its [his science’s] respectability – by objecting, in the courts of Virginia, British Columbia and elsewhere, to the release of his research in this field. See Cuccinelli vs Rectors and Visitors of the University of Virginia…”

At last, after 3 years of legal wrangling, it is made clear why I was so bold as to formally undertake an indemnity to fully compensate Dr Ball for my own actions in the event Mann won the case.  Respected Aussie climate commentator, Jo Nova was one of the few to commend my unparalled commitment to Ball’s cause.

Steyn’s legal team, aware of the latest developments from Vancouver, have correctly adduced that Ball has effectively defeated Mann after the Penn. State pretender’s preposterous and inactive lawsuit against Ball was rendered dormant for failure to prosecute. Under law, Mann’s prevarications, all his countless fudging and evasiveness in the matter, establishes compelling evidence that his motive was not to prove Ball had defamed him, but more likely a cynical attempt to silence fair and honest public criticism on a pressing and contentious government policy issue.

The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) along Australia’ s northern coast has long been considered one of the world’ s natural wonders. It stretches for over 1,000 miles along Australia’ s northeastern coast and is home to many species of marine organisms.

As of late, the GBR is under attack. The crown-of-thorns starfish, a native species, is said to have exploded in numbers and is munching its way through the coral “forest” to the detriment of the corals. In the past, there was a balance, a kind of give and take that allowed all species to prosper in a steady ratio. That has suddenly changed and the starfish is grazing the coral to death.

What changed?

Climate, a Weapon of Mass Destruction?

The starfish in question lives by eating the soft parts of corals in the GBR. It has become a major threat now that it has been multiplying greatly due to over-fertilization of the water with nutrients from (land) surface runoff. The latter, of course, is a consequence of the farmers’  desire to turn every square inch of arable land into production of “fuel” like bio-ethanol and bio-diesel. Don’ t blame the farmers though. Al Gore, former Vice-President of the U.S. and John Kerry, the current Secretary of State and, of course, President Obama describe “global warming” AKA “climate change” as the numero uno threat to mankind; in Kerry’ s words a ‘weapon of mass destruction.’ Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich calls this statement delusional.

SPAIN: The Spanish government said it plans to end all price subsidies for wind capacity online before end-2004, while slashing remuneration for younger capacity.

The full 1,700-page regulation, a summary of its long-awaited renewables regulation, was sent to regulator CNMC for a 20-day consultation period. It has not yet been made public. The summary alone, nonetheless, discloses an act of institutional “retroactive looting”, Spanish wind association AEE told Windpower Monthly. 

Investors behind all of Spain’s 22.6GW of online wind capacity were drawn by the state’s promise of maintaining feed-in tariffs for 20 years. 

In this mind-blowing book ‘The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science;’ one of the world’s leading sceptic climatologists, Tim Ball, presents us with the evidence as to why the UN IPCC is nothing more and nothing less than a politically contrived organisation.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed by two UN organisations (UNEP and WMO) and endorsed by UN General Assembly Resolution 43/53. It’s not a scientific body. Its charter restricts it to searching for human induced (global) climate change and to not consider natural climate forces. Yet, it’s impossible to identify human influence unless natural influences and mechanisms are thoroughly known.

In practice the IPPC does not countenance any information or hypothesis not supporting its supposition of human causation. Climate change has been redefined to mean anthropogenic (human) climate change. The IPCC’s purpose is to find human climate change. Without that its bureaucrats have no job. The IPCC is accountable to no nation or UN assembly of nations. It’s controlled by systems overseen by a small clique of independent UN powerbrokers.

China’s moon rover called Yutu or Jade Rabbit may have turned into junk. Launched on the Moon’s surface on December 15, 2013, it was the pride and joy of China’s fledgling space program. Yutu was the first rover to be landing there since 1973. However, the excitement did not last long; a few days ago the Jade Rabbit suffered a malfunction and has been in a semi-dormant state since. As of yesterday, it is tweeting new messages to its millions of followers but may not be quite its former self. In any event, its design life span is three months only.

Mankind first set foot on the Moon in 1969 when the American astronaut Neil Armstrong stepping off the lunar lander Eagle proudly said “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” No doubt, the mission to the Moon was a grand achievement for the U.S. and mankind in general.

Space Exploration

The international competition in space exploration got going in 1957 when the Soviet Union announced the successful launch of Sputnik, the first satellite to circumnavigate the Earth high above its surface. A few years later Yuri Gagarin became the first cosmonaut to circle the earth in a Soviet space craft.

That’s when U.S.  President John F. Kennedy threw down the gauntlet and the space race was on. He challenged the country to send a man to the Moon and have him safely return again to Earth in the few years before the end of the decade.

Every other week or so we are treated to news about the hunt for water on Mars. Each time a find seems ever so close, but no cigar yet.Every other week or so we are treated to news about the hunt for water on Mars. Each time a find seems ever so close, but no cigar yet.

Mars

Mars, also known as the Red Planet, is an uninhabitable planet, at least for us Earthlings, even if some traces of water were eventually discovered there. Sorry, no showers in fresh Martian water for the 100,000-plus volunteers who have signed up for one-way trips to Mars. Actually, I suspect they will be thirsty as well and dehydration will cut short their life there in no time flat if they ever get there at all.

However, as reported by the journal Geophysical Research Letters, a new study claims to have found more circumstantial evidence of underground water on Mars. The researchers think that some dark streaks on the Martian surface could possibly be explained as erosion features caused by flowing water or by a similar phenomenon.

Every scientific paper tells a story that is based on one or more assumptions and the validity of the conclusions will obviously depend on the validity of the starting assumptions. For example, if one wants to correlate the effect of sunspots numbers on the temperatures observed at ground level on our planet, the validity of that correlation will depend on the accuracy of sunspot count and the accuracy of temperature measurements at ground level.

While the sunspots are real and can be confirmed, the use of the so called ‘annual global temperature’ to represent ‘temperatures’ is scientifically invalid since it cannot be measured, it cannot be validated and it has nothing to do with the physical reality observed on our planet. It, therefore, follows that the correlation between sunspot numbers and the temperatures that are represented by the ‘annual global temperature’ values is meaningless and nonsensical.  

When it comes to the greenhouse gas theory (GHT), the situation is the same. If our planet is assumed to be a black body, a grey body or for that matter, a pink body and then given a full mathematical treatment with reference to the great names from the world of theoretical world of physics like Planck, Stefan and Boltzman, any conclusion based on those starting assumptions have to be wrong since our planet is NOT some sort of black body. In other words, there is no problem with Stefan-Boltzman’s treatment of black body, but there is a huge problem with treating the earth’s atmosphere as a black body!