The WaPo On Climate Change - Can't Get It Right Even When Reporting Others Are Wrong

Juliet Eilperin and David A. Fahrenthold of the WaPo cover the latest unraveling of the IPCC but still manage to recycle a mistake Ms. Eilperin made last November.  Here we go again, from their third paragraph:

There is still a scientific consensus that humans are causing climate change.

And a bit later:

Climate researchers say the errors do not disprove the U.N. panel's central conclusion: Climate change is happening, and humans are causing it. Some researchers said the U.N. panel's attitude -- appearing to promise that its results were infallible, and reacting slowly to evidence that they were not -- could undermine the rest of its work.

Ahhhh!  Based on the IPCC 2007 report (p. 5), there is a consensus that it is "very likely" that human activity is responsible for "most" of the observed global warming:

Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations.  It is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic warming over the past 50 years averaged over each continent (except Antarctica) (Figure SPM.4).

That is a bit different and might be worth getting right one day.  Even the Times has accomplished that.

CAN'T KILL WHAT'S ALREADY DEAD:  I like this political analysis:

It is unclear whether the controversy will hamper passage of a bill to cap U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, which has stalled in the Senate. Paul W. Bledsoe, of the bipartisan National Commission on Energy Policy, said that if people want to know why the "bill is having a hard time in the Senate, I would rank [concern about climate science] lower than the economy and the financial meltdown."

Comments

[DrJ]

they were only debunking the IPCC's conception of the greenhouse effect.

That was the only part of potential interest. They could have done that in five pages and left out the other 95 that was terribly weak.

[Melinda Romanoff]

Yes, kim, that's precisely where I saw it, just couldn't remember, but I remember the theft.

As far as Miskolczi's work, it's quite an elegant solution, and I had forgotten to bookmark it on this new(ish) computer. So, again, thank you for the reminder.

[daddy]

Just to make the point of this picture even more ludicrous.

In wintertime Winnipeg, when it's super, super cold, and you have to do the preflight walk-around, you wind up running around to the exhaust port of the APU (auxiliary Power unit) to try to stop from freezing to death what with the howling winds and subzero wind-chills etc. You finish smelling like exhaust, but 2 or 3 times during the walk-around inspection, depending on how cold it is and what you're looking at, you have to go back and stand in the APU blast in order not to freeze. That bubble of exhaust raises the temp from 30 below to a survivable +50 while standing in the blast zone 100 feet from the source. And the APU is simply a relatively small motor, used only to provide electrics, a little air conditioning while sitting on deck, and pneumatics for starting the big engines. So if a little APU causes that much change in temp, just imagine the change from big turbofans multiple times a day, blasting away at supposedly uncontaminated ambient temperature sensors relied upon to give accurate, unbiased readings of the real world.

If I intentionally wanted to place a temp sensor in a location so as to make it provide inaccurate readings, it'd be hard to pick a better location than what we see in that picture above.

[It's just disgraceful. It was your money they did this with, too.]

I don't mean to say that the weatherstations have been deliberately degraded; that seems to be mostly neglect, and not thinking. The way the temperature record has been corrupted has been in dropping sites that do not show warming like rural and higher altitude ones. Joe d'Aleo and E. M. Smith, AKA Chiefio, have published about this.
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[Melinda Romanoff]

Neglect, as in "Whadda ya mean I shouldn't put the Weber Grill here?" That one was particularly funny.

Point well made, and those "flexible" Chinese sites come to mind as well.

Randomness, my a@#.

[Just one bit of dissonance the alarmists are dealing with now.]

This same Jones fella, with a man named Wang from the University of Albany published a paper in the early '90s purporting to show from weatherstations in China that the Urban Heat Island effect is non existent. That study is bogus, but underlaid much IPCC thinking and was used to help calibrate the satellite series to the land series. Wang was investigated and cleared, but Jones has since published a study contradicting there first one.

Re-open the investigation on Wang and Jones.
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[clarice]

Yes.

Reopen it, and then start publishing the weather station pics, and third, start showing where they were when their first records were listed and what that area looks like now. You know what I mean: Weather station 1, originally at the playing field for Romulus and Remus and now at the heat exhaust vent of the Alfa Romeo factory.

[Found at Memeorandom]

Well here's an ask and ye shall receive. Heidi Blake, at the UKTelegraph, reports that Anthony Watts has just published his Surface Stations report.
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[Melinda Romanoff]

I seem to recall that Wang's data suffered from mice, as well. Some distinct holes.

Some time at a facility like Rostenkowski's Oxford Vacation Home, might be suitable for these frauds.

[daddy]

Please suggest to Rush that his Paul Shanklin guy needs to do a ClimateGate Falsified data remake of the hit Devo tune "Whip-it", called "Pencil-Whip-it", or something close. Sung in Al Gore's voice.

[daddy]

When the data isn't fine, pencil whip-it
When you can't hide the decline, pencil whip-it..

Pencil whip-it,
Now whip it good...

[daddy]

Kim's odd locations for temp sensors ">http://surfacestations.org/odd_sites.htm"> site.

[daddy]

And Kim's link to the ">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7236011/UN-global-warming-data-skewed-by-heat-from-planes-and-buildings.html"> UK Telegraph story talking about why the climate sensors are unreliable.

[daddy]

Ho Hum, (Yawn)
Now">http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/15/hatton_on_hurricanes/">Now IPCC hurricane data is questioned.

"More trouble looms for the IPCC. The body may need to revise statements made in its Fourth Assessment Report on hurricanes and global warming. A statistical analysis of the raw data shows that the claims that global hurricane activity has increased cannot be supported."

[Remember how they blamed AGW for Katrina? It was a lie.]

Ryan Maue, in Florida, has a graph showing that Accumulated Cyclone Energy, the total worldwide energy in cyclones which is the generic term for hurricanes, and it shows a 30 year low.
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[But Boxer's lined him up for a fundraiser. This might be fun.]

Heh, Mark Levin thinks Al Gore might be in the FBI witness protection program.
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[rse]

Kim-

Did you see this bit of alarmism from the Britannica Blog of the dire effects from our warming earth.

The warming earth will be releasing deadly viruses and toxins from the melting ice. Last seen before the rise of man in significant numbers.

LUN

Yikes! Contact Hollywood. Ms Rogers is still worried about those Himalayan glaciers and citing UN reports.

[Popular delusions and the madness of crowds.]

The delirium is clearing; the fever has broken.
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[BR]

OT - My latest discoveries:

Beer goes well with ice cream!

And there's a wonderful beer haiku site :)

(See Aug 21)

[cathyf]

Back 15 years ago or so, I remember the discussion being "well, actually global warming should lower the intensity of hurricanes, so that's one compensating thing..."

As a religion, it's not even a very good one. You would think that they would latch on the minimum of hurricane activity as evidence in favor of GW.

[Janet]

Speaking of AGW as a religion....It seems to be mixing with weak faiths to become a whole "new" belief system. LUN Powerline

"When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. He believes in anything." G.K.Chesterton

[Janet]

I'm gonna just reach over here...um..."click"...ugh...and turn off the light. There...... my charitable action for the day.

[It never ends.]

I like the paraphrase Janet. 'Who believes nothing, is nothing'.
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[It ever lasts.]

I keep trying to reconcile that with my skepticism.
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