(March 2, 2015) — Dr. Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics released the following statement through The Heartland Institute in response to repeated attacks on his character and scientific integrity.
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You have to laugh, there’s some serious conspiracy ideation going on here, and precious little science.:
| From: | Professor Naomi Oreskes <xxx@xxxxxxxx.xxx> |
| To: |
Roger Tattersall <xxx@xxxxxx.xxx>
|
| Date: |
  14:10 |
Slugging the Kool-aid again Naomi?
Dear Roger,
When I wrote the book Merchants of Doubt in 2010, I only wanted one thing: to uncover the truth about who was behind the widespread, and sadly, effective, campaigns to undermine the established science of climate change, and why they were doing what they were doing.
I never imagined that, a few years later, Sony Pictures would release Merchants of Doubt, a captivating feature film that exposes the ugly world of climate denial like never before.
Exoplanet analysis is a growing field of scientific study as data pours in from the likes of NASA’s successful Kepler probe.
The abstract of a new paper explains its focus on this data:
‘Mean motion resonances and near-resonances up to the outer/inner orbital period ratio’s value of 5 and the denominator 4 are tested for all adjacent exoplanet orbits.’
Without delving into the nuts and bolts of the analysis here, let’s look at the list of results (click on image to view details):
By Marian C. Ghilea (2015)
The column ‘resonance type’ shows the planet:planet ratios we’re interested in.
Clearly there are many examples, although ‘near resonances’ are also included.
From the author’s concluding remarks:
‘Performing a simple analysis, the resonance or near-resonance states present in all the multiplanetary systems known to date can be found numerically using a computer analysis tool.’
‘The first results, presented in this paper, suggest different resonance or near-resonance distributions for different planet categories. The resonance/near resonance numbers of 2/1 and 3/2 appear to be dominant for the planets with larger masses while the 5/3 resonance seems to be the most common for terrestrial planets and mini neptunes. For giant planets, the 2/1 resonances are dominating at larger distances from the host star while the 3/2 resonance is more common at close distances from it. Resonances for values higher than 5/2 are encountered
only for planets with masses larger than 10 (ME*)’ [*Earth masses].
We can see from this that these ‘near resonances’ crop up regularly in exoplanet systems just as they do in our solar system e.g. Jupiter-Saturn 5:2, Neptune-Pluto 3:2.
Whatever the mechanism(s) involved, the frequency of their appearance can’t be regarded as accidental.
***
See also the Wikipedia page on orbital resonance
Well known hockeyjockey Michael Mann has a post up on Huffpo, claiming the ‘hiatus’ or ‘plateau’ in global warming which he says doesn’t exist, only happened because oscillations. To prove this he introduces a new one, which he calls the NMO. I think it stands for Numerically Magical Obfuscation.
NMO is derived from some twisty manipulation of the AMO (in blue) and the PMO (in green).
Just because Mann ‘invented’ the AMO doesn’t mean he gets to fiddle with the underlying data does it?
The Bloggie Finalists for 2015
I assume double finalist will come as a surprise to Paul Homewood who is on a roll at the moment.
RealClimate and WUWT in the same finalist catagory, oops, again. :-)
One of the unsolved solar mysteries is the peculiar behaviour around year 1800. The data we have is poor leading to ambiguity on whether a solar sunspot cycle is missing from the record.
Figures from paper. For a legible copy you will need to register and download the PDF.
The lost sunspot cycle: New support from 10Be measurements
C. Karoff, F. Inceoglu, M. F. Knudsen, J. Olsen, A. Fogtmann-Schulz
A&A 575 A77 (2015)
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201424927
(early preview with registration)
ABSTRACT
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Tsk, weather eh?
1913 Low Min Records Broken in Last 7 Days (272 tied) according to the NOAA.
Below is a screenshot showing location and the biggest difference between old record and new record.
The list is just the ones I could capture in a screenshot. Wow. Many records broken by over 30F.
![Cruithne's orbit of the Sun [credit: GravitySimulator.com]](https://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/cruithne6.gif)
Cruithne’s orbit of the Sun
[credit: GravitySimulator.com]
‘Cruithne has an orbit that stretches from the orbit of Mercury to beyond the orbit of Mars. But remarkably, Cruithne’s period is almost exactly the same as Earth’s. This sets the table for some interesting orbital interactions.’ – quoting GravitySimulator.com.
Phys.org takes up the story:
We all know and love the moon. We’re so assured that we only have one that we don’t even give it a specific name. It is the brightest object in the night sky, and amateur astronomers take great delight in mapping its craters and seas. To date, it is the only other heavenly body with human footprints.
What you might not know is that the moon is not the Earth’s only natural satellite. As recently as 1997, we discovered that another body, 3753 Cruithne, is what’s called a quasi-orbital satellite of Earth. This simply means that Cruithne doesn’t loop around the Earth in a nice ellipse in the same way as the moon, or indeed the artificial satellites we loft into orbit. Instead, Cruithne scuttles around the inner solar system in what’s called a “horseshoe” orbit.
![Sorry folks [image credit: wikia]](https://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/end_is_nigh.jpg)
Sorry folks [image credit: wikia]
The Guardian newspaper finally facing up to climate reality? Well, after a fashion. Their global warming can may have been kicked down the road for a while, that’s all.
The idea that natural variation could make temperatures go up as well as down is still not for discussion in their biased climate world.
H/T Lord Beaverbrook.
Guardian report: Manmade global warming over the past decade has probably been partly offset by the cooling effect of natural variability in the Earth’s climate system, a team of climate researchers have concluded.
The finding could help explain the slowdown in temperature rises this century that climate sceptics have seized on as evidence climate change has stopped, even though 14 of the 15 hottest years on record have happened since 2000.
The authors of the new paper describe the slowdown, sometimes called a global warming hiatus or pause, as a “false pause”. They warn that the natural cycles in the Pacific and Atlantic that they found are currently having an overall cooling effect on temperatures will reverse in the coming decades – at which point warming will accelerate again.
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Sustainable?
H/T to Benny Peiser for this excerpt from a Times article (paywalled)
Putin Ready To Turn Off Europe’s Gas Supply
The Times, 26 February 2015 David Charter
Russia threatened yesterday to disrupt gas supplies to Europe within days, opening a new front in the showdown over Ukraine.
President Putin demanded immediate advance payments from Kiev to keep the gas taps on in the depths of winter. Cutting off gas would be likely to hit transit flows to Europe.
His ultimatum came on the day that the EU announced ambitious plans for an “energy union” to end Russia’s energy stranglehold over the continent.
Officials admitted, however, that it would take many years and an investment of €1 trillion in infrastructure to achieve energy security after delays caused by previous failed attempts at better EU co-operation.
An article in the Daily Mail today piqued my interest. It trumpets empirical results which they say empirically confirm the theoretical CO2 greenhouse effect for the first time:
“Scientists have witnessed carbon dioxide trapping heat in the atmosphere above the United States, showing human-made climate change ‘in the wild’ for the first time.
A new study in the journal Nature demonstrates in real-time field measurements what scientists already knew from basic physics, lab tests, numerous simulations, temperature records and dozens of other climatic indicators.
They say it confirms the science of climate change and the amount of heat-trapping previously blamed on carbon dioxide.”
“These instruments, located at ARM research sites in Oklahoma and Alaska, measure thermal infrared energy that travels down through the atmosphere to the surface.
They can detect the unique spectral signature of infrared energy from CO2.
Other instruments at the two locations detect the unique signatures of phenomena that can also emit infrared energy, such as clouds and water vapor.
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Roger Pielke Jr gets the McCarthy treatment for daring to point out that the insurance payouts for natural disasters don’t correlate with (non)changes in the frequency of ‘extreme weather’.
As some of you will already know, I am one of 7 US academics being investigated by US Representative Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) who is the ranking member of the House of Representatives Committee on Environment and Natural Resources. Rep. Grijalva has sent a letter to the president of my university requesting a range of information, including my correspondence, the letter is here in PDF.
Before continuing, let me make one point abundantly clear: I have no funding, declared or undeclared, with any fossil fuel company or interest. I never have. Representative Grijalva knows this too, because when I have testified before the US Congress, I have disclosed my funding and possible conflicts of interest. So I know with complete certainty that this investigation is a politically-motivated “witch hunt” designed to intimidate me (and others) and to smear my name.
For instance, the Congressman and his staff, along with compliant journalists…
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The latest results from the TIM/SORCE TSI instrument show that solar cycle 24 hit a peak on Feb 6th at around 1362.3W/m^2. Does anyone think it’ll go any higher?
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A long and well structured look at European Unreliables energy production by Ed Hoskins. Click on the ‘View original‘ link to see legible graphs!
The diagrams below collate the cost and capacity factors of European Renewable Energy power sources, Onshore and Off-shore Wind Farms and Large scale Photovoltaic Solar generation. They are compared to the cost and output capacity of conventional Gas Fired Electricity generation.
Overall European renewable Energy has almost 6 times lower capacity than conventional Gas Fired power generation and it costs about 16 times more in capital expenditure alone.
In all the capital costs expended by 2013 in Europe amounted to some €1/2 trillion for ~170 Gigawatts of “nominal” installed Renewable Energy generation. But because of the reduced capacity factor, those installations provide ~30 Gigawatts of real output electrical…
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EU ‘Backtracks’ On CO2 Targets In UN Accounting Fudge
Responding to Climate Change 24 February 2015
Europe’s proposed new climate goals could be weaker than previously announced due to its method of accounting for changes in land use.
Last October the bloc agreed to target greenhouse gas cuts of 40% on 1990 levels by 2030, a rise on its 20% goal for 2020.
But in a leaked document outlining the European Commission’s plans for curbing carbon pollution, the 40% goal now includes land use, land use change and forestry accounting.
This means the growth of existing forests could be used towards EU targets, which analysts say could mean the 40% drops to 35% in reality.
Niklas Höhne, an analyst at the NewClimate Institute, told RTCC this would place less pressure on other sectors such as energy and transport to reduce their carbon footprint.
“Forests grow and sequester more and more carbon without an additional intervention… they allow in the end accounting for reductions without any additional action,” he said.
Farmlands, wetlands and forests cover 90% of the EU’s land mass, and are currently regarded as a carbon sink, sucking and storing carbon from the atmosphere. […]
“Given that heads of states agreed to “at least” 40%, including the land use sector would not be in line with the political decision that has already been taken,” said Eva Filzmoser from the Carbon Market Watch NGO.
“It would also be seen as ‘backsliding’ from the originally presented 40% target and would set the EU off on a bad start towards agreeing on an ambitious international climate treaty in Paris in December 2015.”
Interviewed by Nick Ferrari on LBC radio this morning, Natalie tells Nick she’s going to build 500,000 social homes. Nick asks how much it’ll cost. Natalie shuffles her feet, coughs, feigns a severe cold, and then says costings will be done, but won’t appear in the manifesto. 3 mins audio. Enjoy.
And from the archives, footage I shot as I went to meet Benny Peiser a couple of year ago:
H/T to Chaeremon for flagging up this recent paper from Jiang et al which gets better detail on solar forcing of climate. Paywalled, abstract only, but there is a fugure from Jiang’s earlier 2005 paper covering 1200 years around Iceland.
AbstractMounting evidence from proxy records suggests that variations in solar activity have played a significant role in triggering past climate changes. However, the mechanisms for sun-climate links remain a topic of debate. Here we present a high-resolution summer sea-surface temperature (SST) record covering the past 9300 yr from a site located at the present-day boundary between polar and Atlantic surface-water masses. The record is age constrained via the identification of 15 independently dated tephra markers from terrestrial archives, circumventing marine reservoir age variability problems. Our results indicate a close link between solar activity and SSTs in the northern North Atlantic during the past 4000 yr; they suggest that the climate system in this area is more susceptible to the influence of solar variations during cool periods with less vigorous ocean circulation. Furthermore, the high-resolution SST record indicates that climate in the North Atlantic regions follows solar activity variations on multidecadal to centennial time scales.
Originally posted on 
