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New EU Research Confirms Roman Warming Period In Arctic Regions Warmer Than Modern

Empirical evidence from Arctic-region waters near Greenland establish robust warming of the Roman Period

Read here. Map source (click to enlarge).

Despite the bogus claims of the UN's bureaucrats and the IPCC Climategate "scientists," the polar areas of the Northern Hemisphere have had warmer climates prior to the 20th and 21st centuries.

There is a vast body of research and empirical evidence confirming that the Arctic regions, and other parts of the globe, were indeed warmer during both the Roman and Medieval eras. In fact, global warming, cooling and climate change are natural events that never cease - that is irrefutable, unequivocal climate reality.

A peer-reviewed study by Perner et al. just added to that mountain of evidence confirming the robust warming of the Greenland area prior to the the modern era.

"The six researchers -- hailing from Denmark, Germany, Norway, Poland and the United Kingdom -- say that their new high-resolution benthic foraminiferal record from Disko Bugt "documents a marked long-term cooling trend over the last 3.6 ka BP," but they state that superimposed on this longer-term late Holocene cooling trend, there is evidence of millennial to centennial scale variability. This variability begins with what they describe as "a pronounced cooling event" at c. 2.5 ka BP, after which "a warm phase in bottom waters is recorded at c. 1.8 ka BP, which corresponds to the 'Roman Warm Period' and is seen to represent the warmest bottom water conditions recorded in Disko Bugt during the last 3.6 ka BP." This unique warm period was in turn followed by a cooler period (which would obviously be the Dark Ages Cold Period), after which they identify a warming of the subsurface waters during the 'Medieval Climate Anomaly'," which was followed (from 0.9 ka BP) by "pervasive and even harsher environmental conditions" that ultimately culminate at 0.3 ka BP in what they say is the Little Ice Age, and from which the region has yet to recover to Medieval Warm Period conditions." [K. Perner, M. Moros, J.M. Lloyd, A. Kuijpers, R.J. Telford, J. Harff 2011: Quaternary Science Reviews]

Previous peer-reviewed postings.

The UN Lies of Durban: Global Warming Is "Unprecedented," "Unquivocal" & "Accelerating"

The United Nations bureaucrats & its Climagegate scientists continue pushing the big lies of man-made global warming and climate change

It has been well documented, and agreed to by the vast majority of climate scientists, that global warming has subsided since 1996. This has occurred despite the large increase in CO2 levels; and, of course, despite the prognostications of the UN's Climategate-savant "scientists" who apparently spend most of their research time and monies plotting against other scientists than doing actual science.

With the recent publication of October 2011 HadCRUT global temperatures (the IPCC's gold-standard), it is again confirmed by the empirical evidence that global warming is not driven by atmospheric levels of CO2, which means that the feared climate change is not being driven by man-made CO2 emissions either. 

Climate Models Vs. Reality

15 Years - October 2011

17 Years - October 2011

As the above charts reveal, the United Nation's Durban climate conference claims that human CO2 emissions are causing unprecedented, unequivocal and accelerating warming (ie. climate change) are nothing more than fabricated, robust lies. The left most chart plots actual global temperatures (HadCRUT and GISS) versus the predicted outcomes of one of the preeminent climate models. (click on each image to enlarge)

The middle chart plots global temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels over the most recent 15 years ending October 2011. The chart on the right is same data plotted but for the 17-year span ending October 2011 (some Climategate scientists insist an extra 2 years makes all the difference when speaking of global warming). The polynomial fitted curves on these two charts indicate that global warming is becoming cooling, and at most, global warming is projected to be less than 1 degree by 2100.

And, as these charts reveal, clearly the IPCC's favored climate models are significantly wrong by orders of magnitude that smack of total incompetence. The UN's anti-scientific claims of global warming, repeated by political hacks like of Al Gore, Obama and Jon Huntsman, are meritless lies designed to push the agenda of global governance favored by the elites, the wealthy and the corporate special interests.

The lies that perpetuate the global warming and climate change hysteria exhibited by Durban conferees are both insidous and never-ending (note the most recent release of Climategate emails). These lies emanate from the bowels of the UN's IPCC and its senior climate "scientists" with no shame or remorse.

"OK, so you are a serial liar. Like I said, I’ve made my peace with that. It used to rankle me, but not any more. I just accepted that you can’t be trusted and I moved on. I do have compassion for you, Dr. Jones. None of you guys set out to do the ugly things you ended up doing. You all got caught by Noble Cause Corruption, by the vision of being smarter than everyone else and of being the only people standing between us and global destruction. It’s heady, treacherous stuff...I have been a victim of that same self-delusion myself. I understand the sweet seduction that arises from the conviction that your mission is of vital, crucial importance to the whole planet."

Climategate 2.0: The Hypocrisy, Fraud & Arrogance of Original Climategate Is Confirmed

The elites' consensus "climate change" science is confirmed to be the anti-science green fraud exposed in original Climategate

Read here. With the release of a new set of 'Climategate2.0' emails from the corrupt community of IPCC climate scientists, and the potential for another release, it's time for the current crop of world "leaders" to starve and/or permanently kill off the global warming beast of leftist academia and the rapacious UN bureaucracy.

The original Climategate emails (read this exhaustive Climategate1.0 eMail Analysis and the superb Climategate1.0 - Scientists Behaving Badly article) clearly documented that the establishment's global warming and anti-CO2 crusade was at best, a robustly venal science effort. The utter corruption of science and the politics of the left/liberal/progressive/Democrat anti-science was fully revealed, we thought.

But as it turns out, the batch of Climategate emails from late 2009 did not tell the whole story. With this 2011 batch of Climategate2.0 emails, and possibly a Climategate3.0 batch looming, the UN's emperor robe has fallen all the way to its ankles revealing the full ugliness and lies of official post-modern green politics and "global warming" science.

It's time for Republican presidential candidates to admit that they and the public were lied to about the science of global warming and climate change. This admission should be then followed with bold proposals to finally clean up the climate science corruption that has been allowed to permeate throughout the U.S. funded science establishment - taxpayer billions wasted on corrupt science and the enriching of climate scientists should be stopped, now.

Yale 360 Publishes A Gross Misrepresentation On Ocean Acidification: Purposeful Green Fraud?

The 'Yale 360' body allergic to empirical data and objective science regarding ocean acidification and climate change

Read here. Green fraud is endemic within the academic community and is a major reason why the public now view science with less esteem. The Yale 360 forum provides further proof that the academia realm is less interested in honest science than in perpetuating the green fraud hysteria of climate change.

Case in point. A green propagandist, Elizabeth Grossman, had her hysterical ocean acidification article published by Yale 360. The article claims that a massive oyster die-off was caused by ocean acidification, which is supposedly caused by human CO2 emissions. Unfortunately for the public, this Yale 360 article is another "gross" misrepresentation of scientific truth and the actual empirical evidence.

Sooo...why did the oysters at the oyster farm really die? Here are the real science reasons that Yale 360 and Grossman decided the public really did not want to know:

• Larval and juvenile shellfish are highly sensitive to acidic (low pH) seawater because their shells are formed from calcium carbonate, and dissolves when pH is low
• Because this hypoxic and relatively acidic up-welled water is coming from deep basins and is cold (8 – 10 oC), it is saturated with dissolved gases such as carbon dioxide and nitrogen while at the same time being low in oxygen as a result of biological decomposition in the benthic zone
• When hatcheries heat this gas-saturated seawater to 25 – 28 oC in order to meet the temperature requirements of young shellfish, the seawater becomes super-saturated
• Preliminary experiments indicate that oyster larvae are very sensitive to gas super-saturation under these conditions
• A third problem for shellfish hatcheries is the recent increase in the prevalence of a pathogenic bacterium (Vibrio tubiashii or Vt) that seems to out-compete other, more benign species in this distorted environment
• High levels of mortality in shellfish hatcheries and in the wild have been associated with high levels of Vt in 2006, 2007, and intermittently in previous years, such as in 1998 when environmental conditions favored disease outbreaks
• There is potential for further stress to oyster seed given the difference between water conditions in the hatcheries where larvae are produced, and quality of water found in the remote settings

In essence, natural climate change, in the form of ENSO, causes cold water of the Pacific to rise to the surface during certain periods. This colder water has a higher concentration of CO2 gas. The fish hatchery pumps the cold water into the farm tanks and then heats the water. This act of heating the cold water then causes it to become CO2 super-saturated. In addition, the freshly pumped sea water contains higher levels of bacteria (associated with a specific natural ENSO climate mode) dangerous to the oyster larvae/juveniles.

Voila, a perfect storm of predictable factors cause a die-off of farm oysters, robustly a result of natural climatic conditions. Atmospheric CO2 levels and human CO2 emissions had nothing to do with this incident.

Conclusion: The academic-oriented Yale 360 environmental forum is not to be believed on any climate change or ocean acidification issue, as it is more a forum of green hysteria that is incredibly vulnerable to perpetuating scary green myths and anti-science fraud B.S.

Climategate's Ben Santer's 17-Year Global Warming Trend: It Indicates Only A +0.95°C Increase By 2100

NOAA & NCDC Publish Data That Has Global Warming Trend Reaching An Increase of Only +0.95 Degree By 2100

Read here. A couple of month's ago we provided several charts using the new Ben Santer 17-year rule of global warming. Those charts clearly indicated that Ben's hysterical, runaway global warming fears (and the IPCC's) were not related to any empirical climate reality.

In a new press release, Ben Santer (of Climategate-violence fame) again pleads with everyone that 17 years is really the true time span to measure the global warming trend.

Unfortunately for "Gentle" Ben, as this latest adjacent 17-year chart of NOAA/NCDC global temperatures reveals [Excel produced], global warming remains insignificant over the past 17 years, ending as of October 2011; and global temperatures continue a trend towards cooling, while CO2 levels keep growing at a robust pace.

The linear trend of the data implies a barely noticeable warming increase of +0.95C degree by year 2100.

This up-to-date 17-year empirical evidence is irrefutable and confirms the catastrophic global warming skeptics position.

Soooo....why does Ben Santer keep pushing the "CO2-causes-runaway-global-warming" schtick that is without any empirical merit?

Hmmm....would assurring that the free taxpayer, global warming research monies keep on flowing be the likely cause?

"Consensus" Science: U.S. Climate Scientists Now Say Global Warming Will Cause Fewer Hurricanes To Strike America

The absurdity of "consensus" climate change science and global warming alarmism on display, again

Read here. As the 2011 hurricane season comes to a close, there has yet to be a direct major hurricane strike on the U.S. since 2005 (note: Hurricane Irene in 2011 became Tropical Storm Irene before striking the continental U.S.).

The anti-science left/liberal/progressives and the IPCC Climategate alarmists have long predicted that CO2-induced global warming will cause more frequent and more severe hurricane strikes on America's Atlantic coast. These AGW hurricanes would then cause massive economic damage and carnage resulting in climate refugees fleeing the coast.

In a nutshell, this is the pathetic and hysterical climate "science" that the left embraces and promulgates, without any supporting empirical evidence (image source), or now, even a credible theory.

A team of NOAA researchers has recently completed a new analysis and have now conceived a new "consensus" science: global warming will cause less storms to strike the U.S.

Wang et al. analyzed the Atlantic Warming Pool (AWP) history and determined that when it was warmer and larger, the AWP birthed hurricanes that were farther from U.S. shores and less likely to strike the Atlantic coasts. Ergo, global warming may indeed cause larger storms but they would dissipate over open waters before reaching U.S.

"For this investigation, Wang and colleagues divided the observed history of Atlantic tropical cyclones (since 1970) into years with large AWPs and those with small AWPs and then tallied up within each division storm characteristics such as number and tracking tendency. What they found was that large AWPs were associated with more storms, but—and this is important—storms which preferentially stayed off-shore and did not make landfall along the U.S. coast. In other words, the hurricanes which formed became less menacing...as the AWP increased in size it made conditions more favorable for tropical cyclone formation and growth further out in the Atlantic Ocean. And at the same time, it altered the atmospheric circulation patterns over the central Atlantic Ocean such that the storms which did form were steered more northward into the open Atlantic and away from the U.S. mainland." [Chunzai Wang, Hailong Liu, Sang-Ki Lee, Robert Atlas 2011: Geophysical Research Letters]

Previous hurricane-cyclone, failed-prediction and peer-reviewed postings. List of past extreme, severe weather events.

New EU Research: Medieval Unprecedented Warming Period Temps Robustly Higher - By 1.2 Degrees

Another study disproves Penn State's Michael Mann global warming hockey-stick "science"

Read here. With the advancement of paleo-climate science in recent years, the empirical evidence clearly indicates that Penn State's Michael Mann 'hockey stick' temperature graph to be without merit. The hockey-stick scenario was so discredited that even the IPCC eliminated it from their 2007 report.

Yet the hockey-stick myth continues to survive as a green legend despite the mounting empirical evidence that the Medieval Global Warming remains unprecedented.

Indeed, as the adjacent chart indicates, the Medieval Warming was significantly higher than the current warming.

Abrantes et al. just published research revealing the persistent high Medieval temperatures of coastal waters off the Portugal coast. Their analysis (from 900 AD to year 2002) is based on a sediment core from the Atlantic Ocean seabed.

As can be seen, levels of atmospheric CO2 have had little, if any, impact on sea surface temperatures. And this specific research clearly indicates that as CO2 levels rose, the SSTs declined - opposite of IPCC's climate model predictions.

"Abrantes et al. reconstructed a sea surface temperature (SST) history for waters off the coast of Porto, Portugal covering the past thousand years...revealed the occurrence of the Little Ice Age, as well as what they describe as the "persistently higher temperatures registered in the AD 960-1300 interval that we identify as the MWP [ed: Medieval Warming Period]." And from a graph of their SST history, one can see that the peak warmth of the MWP was about 1.2°C greater than the peak warmth of the CWP during the late 20th century." [F. Abrantes, T. Rodrigues, B. Montanari, C. Santos, L. Witt, C. Lopes, A. H. L. Voelker 2011: Climate Research]

Previous unprecedented-warming, climate-history and peer-reviewed postings. Additional Medieval unprecedented warming graphs.

Prominent Chinese Climate Scientists Conclude IPCC Is Worthless: "restricted by its political tendencies"

Global warming agenda of elites becomes a major fail...empirical evidence does not support CO2 climate change hypothesis.

Read here. The world's science community is slowly but surely coming to the same conclusion as global warming skeptics: the UN's IPCC is nothing more than political propaganda devoted to the anti-empirical science of big green special interest groups/lobbyists.

The team of climate researchers, Fang et al., came to the following conclusions after an exhaustive review of the IPCC's "consensus" climate science:

"...with regard to the IPCC claim that "the increase in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (including CO2) is the driving force for climate warming," they note the following four problems:

(1) "it remains unclear how the human and natural factors, especially the aerosols, affect the global temperature change,"

(2) "over the past century, the temperature change has not always been consistent with the change of CO2 concentration," since "for several periods, global temperatures decreased or were stable while the atmospheric CO2 concentration continuously increased,"

(3) "there is no significant correlation between the annual increment of the atmospheric CO2 concentration and the annual anomaly of annual mean temperature," and

(4) "the observed significant increase of the atmospheric CO2 concentration may not be totally attributable to anthropogenic emissions because there are great uncertainties in the sources of CO2 concentration in [the] atmosphere." [JingYun Fang, JiangLing Zhu, ShaoPeng Wang, Chao Yue and HaiHua Shen 2011: Science China Earth Sciences]

Unfortunately, the establishment apparatchiks are still wasting their time and untold billions on a political agenda, based on a failed global warming theory and climate change denial of reality, while real problems go unresolved.

Previous peer-reviewed postings.

Missing Post

IPCC's Prediction That CO2 Will Cause High Temperatures Found Wildly Wrong, Scientists Confirm

Read here. It is well documented that the IPCC's climate "experts" (software programmers) inserted a very high (unproven) CO2 climate sensitivity into the computer climate models. For PR propaganda purposes, the IPCC's climate simulations then foretold a future climate of potentially high temperatures due to the mysterious "tipping point."

As this typical climate model prediction chart reveals though, there is an obvious real-time problem with the IPCC programmers' assumption that the climate is highly sensitive to high levels of atmospheric CO2.

New peer-reviewed research has found that the IPCC's climate models are wrong, and the prediction of "accelerating" global warming due high climate sensitivity is wrong. The research confirms previous studies that the projected future tipping point climate conditions were falsehoods. The actual science again proves global warming skeptics to be correct and, more robustly, that anti-science global warming alarmists, such as Chris Mooney, to be...well...er...pathological liars, exaggerators hysteria-loving alarmists who ignore climate reality.

Much to the major chagrin of climate alarmists everywhere, the Schmittner et al. team conclude that an approximate global temperature increase of 2.5 degrees is a much more likely outcome than the over-inflated 5.0 degrees publicized by the IPCC. This new finding makes the upcoming IPCC's the-world-is-melting convention in Durban, South Africa the penultimate farce.

"There is word circulating that a paper soon to appear in Science magazine concludes that the climate sensitivity—how much the earth’s average temperature will rise as a result of a doubling of the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide—likely (that is, with a 66% probability) lies in the range 1.7°C to 2.6°C, with a median value of 2.3°C....In the new paper, the authors find only “vanishing probabilities” for a climate sensitivity value greater than 3.2°C and that values greater than 6.0°C are “implausible.”...results join a growing number of papers published in recent years which, by employing investigations of the earth’s paleoclimate behavior (that is, how the earth’s temperature changes in the past when subject to changing climate forcings) have come to somewhat similar conclusions..." [Schmittner, A., et al., 2011: Science]

Previous failed-prediction, peer-reviewed and climate-model postings.

October 2011 NOAA Data: U.S. Temperature Cooling Trend of 15 Years Continues, -3.7 Degrees

Temperature data source here. Carbon chart source here. (click on images to enlarge)

Climate reality keeps defying (mocking?) the IPCC's Climategate scientists. When examining the global temperature trends, it is clear that global warming has actually been missing for the last 15 years. This has definitely been the case of the continental U.S., as the graph on the left depicts.

And, as the chart on the right depicts, this "global cooling" of the U.S continues in spite of the world's ten worst accelerating CO2 emitters (below the red line) over the last two years. The countries increasing their CO2 emissions the most are: South Africa (home of Durban), Egypt, Brazil, Vietnam, Iran, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, India and China.

The NOAA/NCDC chart represents the 15 years (180 months), starting November 1, 1996 and ending October 31, 2011. Per these latest U.S. official temperature data records, the 12-month period ending October was the 5th coldest October-ending period for the last 15 years.

In terms of a single month, October 2011 was the 33rd warmest since 1895 (October 1963 was the warmest).

The per century cooling trend of this period, a minus 3.7°F, took place despite the huge warmth produced by two large El Niño events during this 15-year span: 1997-1998 and 2009-2010.

For the 10-year period ending October  2011 (November 1, 2001 thru October, 2011 - 120 months), the cooling trend accelerates to a very significant minus 10.6°F per century rate - again, per the updated NOAA/NCDC temperature records.

Please note: These linear temperature trends, as shown in the NOAA chart, are not predictions.

Other modern temperature charts. Historical and fabrication-temperature charts that support the position of global warming skeptics

Crunching The "Global Warming" Numbers: Climate Models Horrendous At Predictions, Both Future & Past

Read here. As scientific study after study has determined, climate models have about zero skill in predicting future climate scenarios. These computer simulations suffer from many shortcomings that automatically prevent them from predicting accurate global warming (or cooling) and associated climate change characteristics.

Even the most incompetent of the Climategate scientists, Kevin ("it's a travesty") Trenberth admits the following about the stupendously expensive climate models:

“None of the models used by IPCC are initialized to the observed state and none of the climate states in the models correspond even remotely to the current observed climate. In particular, the state of the oceans, sea ice, and soil moisture has no relationship to the observed state at any recent time in any of the IPCC models...Moreover, the starting climate state in several of the models may depart significantly from the real climate owing to model errors. I postulate that regional climate change is impossible to deal with properly unless the models are initialized.”

Obviously, the "experts" concur with the laypersons' conclusion: models are worthless regarding future climate predictions. But can climate models at least accurately predict the past (hindcasts), though? Nope.

Bob Tisdale did some extreme number crunching and found that the climate models can't even accurately hindcast the past despite knowing what exactly happened with the past climate.

Soooo, what did he find when he compared the real data of the past versus the simulated past data?

The simulated climate model average determined NINO3 sea area temperatures must have increased at a rate of 10.4C degrees per century.

And what was reality?

NINO3 sea temperatures actually increased at a per century rate of 0.7C degrees.

Summary: Policymakers should completely ignore any scientists who rely on climate models as a basis for future global warming or climate change predictions.

Previous failed-prediction and sea-warming postings. Modern temps, historical temps and climate-model charts.

The IPCC's Unequivocal Climate Liars: Satellites Prove That Global Warming Is Not "Unequivocal"

Land - October 2011	Sea - October 2011	Air - October 2011

The above temperature reconstructions of satellite measurements are as of the end of October 2011. The white areas of each (land, sea and air) represent zero to insignificant temperature cooling/warming; yellow-orange-red colors represent warming; and the blueish areas represent cooling. (click on images to enlarge)

Clearly, what the world's best scientific-based technology tells us is that global warming is not "unequivocal" as most IPCC Climategate scientists robustly claim. In fact, as has been well documented by numerous studies, including BEST, significant warming has been basically absent for some 15 years, which has caused great befuddlement for the IPCC's climate "scientists."

At any point in time, at anyplace on the globe, there could be significant warming, while significant cooling is simultaneously happening at another locale, and both can be associated with vast regional areas of insignificant temperature change. When speaking of "unequivocal" global warming, there is no such thing.

One would think this needless to say, but it seems necessary: the IPCC's unequivocal climate liars would do all of science, the world, and the policymakers a huge service if the lies of "unequivocal," "accelerating," and "unprecedented" global warming were eliminated from the public discourse. These are propaganda terms that the objective empirical evidence robustly refutes.

If that were to happen, it would become increasingly difficult to accurately label scientists as "unequivocal" liars.

Modern, historical and fabricated-fake temperature charts.

Calling Kevin Trenberth: New Tropical Cyclone Research From China Reveals Major IPCC Prediction Fail

Read here. Kevin Trenberth, a prominent IPCC "expert" deeply involved in the Climategate scandal, has long promulgated the IPCC prediction that CO2-induced global warming will cause an increase in tropical cyclones/hurricanes. Trenberth even doubles-down by stating that all modern severe weather events are the result of "unequivocal" global warming. Unfortunately for Trenberth and the IPCC, the overwhelming, unequivocally growing evidence documents well that cyclones/hurricanes have not increased as predicted.

First, as all know to be the case (click on adjacent image to enlarge), Trenberth is truth-challenged in public regarding the supposed "unequivocal" global warming claim (he sings a mightily different tune in private conversations). As the IPCC's gold-standard HadCRUT empirical evidence shows, accelerated global warming has disappeared over the last 15 years.

This evidence is irrefutable, yet Trenberth continues to claim global warming is "unequivocal" despite other climate alarmists giving up the ghost of AGW and are now producing research trying to explain the disappearance of global warming. (One would guess that this disturbing and consistent lack of stating the fundamental climate truth by Trenberth has to be a pathological disorder of some kind.)

Now in addition to the amazing disregard of actual global temperatures, a new study by Ying et al. determines that the empirical evidence proves that the China region has not experienced an increase of tropical cyclones over the last 50 years, which corroborates the vast majority of studies on this subject, globally. Thus, Ternberth's beliefs and predictions are again eviscerated by the cruel empirical scientific process - and the same holds true for the IPCC as well.

"The authors write that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2001, 2007) has twice suggested that "precipitation and extreme winds associated with tropical cyclones may have become more intense." However, they note that this dual claim is "mainly based on numerical models,"...Working with tropical cyclone (TC) best track and related observational severe wind and precipitation datasets created by the Shanghai Typhoon Institute of the China Meteorological Administration...report that over the past half-century there have been no changes in the frequency of TC occurrence...they say that "during the past 50 years, there have been no significant trends in the days of TC...that "the seasonal rhythm of the TC influence on China also has not changed."...found that "the maximum sustained winds of TCs affecting the whole of China and all sub-regions have decreasing trends."...state that "the trends of extreme storm precipitation and 1-hour precipitation were all insignificant."" [Ming Ying, YuHua Yang, BaoDe Chen, Wei Zhang 2011: Science China Earth Sciences]

Previous failed-prediction, severe-weather and peer-reviewed postings. Fabricated-fake and modern temperature charts. A large list of severe-weather events.

International Journal of Modern Physics: 90% of Global Warming May Result From Natural Causes

Read here. Despite the recent BEST climate science fiasco, the BEST team has at least confirmed what everyone on the planet agrees to: the globe has warmed since the Little Ice Age; it warmed at an increase rate during the late 20th century; and, global warming disappeared with a subsequent major deceleration during the 21st century. What the BEST researchers did not determine is the cause of the warming - is temperature variation anthropogenic or natural? A new peer reviewed study in a major physics journal provides the answer to that question.

The answer: Yes!

Using advanced statistical techniques, Ludecke et al. concluded that global temperature variation has causes related to both anthropogenic and natural reasons. Depending on a given climate station's temperature measurements, the warming (cooling) trend is likely to be explained, from 40 to 90%, by natural causes. (The remaining anthropogenic causes of temperature change may be a result of greenhouse gases, UHI, land-use, aerosols and etc.)

"We evaluate to what extent the temperature rise in the past 100 years was a trend or a natural fluctuation and analyze 2249 worldwide monthly temperature records from GISS (NASA) with the 100-year period covering 1906-2005 and the two 50-year periods from 1906 to 1955 and 1956 to 2005...The data document a strong urban heat island effect (UHI) and a warming with  increasing station elevation...About a quarter of all the records for the 100-year period show a fall in temperatures...that the observed temperature records are a combination of long-term correlated records with an additional trend, which is caused for instance by anthropogenic CO2, the UHI or other forcings...As a result, the probabilities that the observed temperature series are natural have values roughly between 40% and 90%, depending on the stations characteristics and the periods considered." [Horst-Joachim Ludecke, Rainer Link, and Friedrich-Karl Ewert 2011: International Journal of Modern Physics C]

Additional BEST and peer-reviewed postings.

The BEST Science PR Fiasco: Rushing To The Ashbin of Climate History

Read here. As BEST's Richard Muller woos a skeptical co-author with sweet nothings about romantic number crunching, he then proceeds to provide an interview that has him denouncing his own WSJ opinion piece regarding the preliminary BEST global temperature findings. Needless to say, the BEST 'PR' campaign has become a self-immolation fiasco. Embarrassing may be an understatement.

In the meantime, sober minded individuals are carefully scrutinizing the BEST global temperature science and finding it deficient and unimpressive. Then there is the analysis by the renowned Steve McIntyre that may help explain the self-immolation.

Skeptic McIntyre's analysis summary, in a nutshell: late 20th century warming has happened and satellite measurement remains superior to any surface temperature reconstruction efforts, whether performed by BEST or GISS or CRU.

"In the 1980s, John Christy and Roy Spencer revolutionized the measurement of temperature data through satellite measurement of oxygen radiance in the atmosphere. This accomplishment sidestepped the intractable problems of creating (what I’ll call) a “temperature reconstruction” from surface data known to be systemically contaminated (in unknown amounts) by urbanization, land use changes, station location changes, measurement changes, station discontinuities etc..."

"If one takes the view that satellite trends provide our most accurate present knowledge of surface trends, then one has to conclude that the BEST methodological innovations (praised by realclimate) actually provide a worse estimate of surface trends than even CRU.

In my opinion, it is highly legitimate (or as at least a null hypothesis) to place greatest weight on satellite data and presume that the higher trends in CRU and BEST arise from combinations of urbanization, changed land use, station quality, Mennian methodology etc.

It seems to me that there is a high onus on anyone arguing in favor of a temperature reconstruction from surface station data (be it CRU or BEST) to demonstrate why this data with all its known problems should be preferred to the satellite data. This is not done in the BEST articles."

It would appear the warm cinders of BEST are headed towards the 'ashbin of climate history' as a result of Muller's hurried and statistically lame temperature reconstructions, speeded along by the amazing PR self-immolation.

Latest Research Disproves IPCC's Climategate Hockey-Stick: Antarctica Was Warmer During Medieval Period

Read here. The Climategate scandal was the door opening that revealed a cadre of IPCC "scientists" conspiring to push their rendition of crop circle pseudoscience. A key component of that effort was the infamous "hockey-stick" that purported to show modern era temperatures to be unprecedented, and the climates of the Medieval Warming (MWP) and Little Ice Age (LIA) to be minor blips of no significance. The IPCC's crop circle scientists also claimed that the MWP and LIA only existed in the small regional area of the north Atlantic/European geography. Subsequent studies and a mountain of empirical evidence refutes the IPCC pseudoscience.

A new peer-reviewed paper by Bertler et al., using the latest deuterium and temperature-isotope science, constructed temperatures going back 1,100 years. The new temperature dataset (see adjacent chart - click to enlarge) clearly shows the LIA in Antarctica to be massively cooler than modern temperatures; the dataset establishes that the modern warming is not "unprecedented" as the MWP is slightly warmer.

"The researchers obtained new deuterium (δD) data from the Ross Sea region of Antarctica that they acquired via analysis of the top fifty meters of a 180-meter-long ice core that had been extracted from the ice divide of Victoria Lower Glacier...work revealed three climatically-distinct time periods: the last 150 years of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP, AD 1140 to 1287), the Little Ice Age (LIA, AD 1288 to 1807), and the Modern Era (ME, AD 1808 to 2000)...authors report that "the final 150 yrs of the MWP were ... about 0.35 °C warmer than the ME,"" [N.A.N. Bertler, P.A. Mayewski, L. Carter 2011: Earth and Planetary Science Letters]

Additional climate-history and peer-reviewed postings. Historical and modern temperature charts.

BEST Research Team Can't Find "Accelerating" Warming -- Instead, Confirms Recent Global Cooling

Hmmm....that didn't take long. The BEST research effort is falling on hard times as controversy and infighting between the authors breaks out. It definitely appears that the non-professional, public relations media campaign that Richard Muller initiated (to satisfy his inner needs?) has backfired, resulting in unwanted additional scrutiny and embarrassing criticism of BEST results.

Putting aside this new climate science 'food fight' that has erupted, what does BEST tell us about the recent past temperatures? In review, it is well established, from the latest peer-reviewed studies by climate alarmist scientists, that there has been essentially no warming since 1998 (a very painful admission, no doubt). And many C-AGW skeptics point out that this lack of warming has been consistent since 2001.

Indeed, the above BEST fig. 1 chart does reveal the lack of warming since the beginning of 2001 - the chart represents a per century trend increase of only 0.3°C degrees (three-tenths of a degree). And by using a 6th order fitted curve (light blue) in the fig. 1 chart, the BEST data indicates a recent cooling trend through the end of May 2010.

Did land surface temperatures continue to cool since May of 2010, as the BEST data seemed to be predicting in fig.1?

The best answer is YES! The land temperatures continued their cooling trend - at the end of August 2011, the per century trend over those 15 months (since May 2010) became a -16.3°C trend (minus 16.3C degrees). The plotted data in fig. 2 show this linear trend using the CRU land surface data. (Note: Since BEST data only goes through May 2010, the fig. 2 CRU data was used. CRU has a very tight correlation of 0.86 with the BEST data going back to the early 20th century, which makes it an excellent proxy for BEST.)

The fig. 3 chart is the entire 128-month period (10+ years) of CRU data since January 1, 2001. As both alarmist and skeptic scientists have previously found, the CRU land temperatures show no warming over this extended period. The per century linear trend for this chart is only +0.05C degrees (five-hundredths of a degree). The 6th order polynomial curve indicates that a cooling direction continues through August 2011.

Now, whether this CRU fitted-curve has similar "predictive powers" as the BEST blue curve in fig. 1 is, at "best", a very speculative guess. Regardless, any claims of "accelerating" warming and/or claims that warming is causing severe weather events are without scientific merit as the empirical evidence strongly suggests cooling to be the more relevant issue.

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