Ozark Highlands Trail along Lake Fort Smith, October 21, 2008, Arkansas

Check out Lake Fort Smith State Park Info and Gallery

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I’m not a scientist and will never be one; thus, I’ll never participate in the scientific investigation of climate change.

However, I do have a fairly technical background and do have some ability to do a little bit of critical thinking and evaluation, so I’ve been doing quite a bit of online research related to climate change. I must admit that a good share of what I’ve read is by people who are skeptics — sometimes called deniers by some of the most ardent global warming alarmists — to one degree or another of human caused global warming.

I’ve included links on the site to quite a few of the items I’ve been looking at and I’ll continue adding more as I find them.

For any who may be interested, the links can be found from the drop down menu on the top bar by clicking on References and then select the appropriate category, as shown in the picture on the right.

I’ll be going back to review a lot of these, including those that I have printed out, to refresh my memeory and to weigh some of the newer (to me) material against some that I read a while ago.

My reading is derived from a number of sources.

I have two google news feeds related to the topic. One of them sends me news stories containing the key phrase climate change. The other feed gives me stories that contain the words sunspot and solar.

I am also subscribed to several blogs that are related to climate change. Most of them can be found on the sidebar on the right side of this page.

Other sources include

• those found on Google searches on words or phrases related to what I am currently trying to understand

• links from other pages or sites

My blogging plans for On Climate are to publish on a semi-regular basis, probably a couple of times a month, but it may be more or less often than that depending on what other things are happening in my life and on my other blogs.

(In the interest of consolidating online material, this post and the reference material was moved from a blog that has been inactive since last year. —  MpG 9/11/2010)

Audio

• Patrick J. Michaels on Climate of Extremes – National Review Online

From the Blogs – Interesting Posts

• UK Met Office Fact 2: Temperatures are continuing to rise – The Blackboard, March 1, 2009
• The Trade Winds Drive The ENSO – Watts Up With That
• William Schlesinger on IPCC: “something on the order of 20 percent have had some dealing with climate.” – Watts Up With That
• The heliospheric current sheet as solar cycle proxy (and how it relates to the “current”solar cycle) – Watts Up With That
• Hansen on “death trains” and coal and CO2 – Watts Up With That
• How I Became a Skeptic about Global Warming Forecasts – The Global Warming Challenge
• Snow job in Antarctica – digging out the data source – Watts Up With That
• Another NASA Defection to the Skeptics’ Camp – Roy Spencer, Ph.D.
• No Scientific Forecasts to Support Global Warming – jennifermarohasy.com
• Antarctic Warming? Part 2 – A letter from a meteorologist on the ground in Antarctica – Watts Up With That
• Increasing Atmospheric CO2: Manmade…or Natural? – Roy Spencer, Ph.D.
• New Study Doesn’t Support Climate Models (But You’ll Never Hear About It) – Roy Spencer, Ph.D.
• Brutal Cold in the IPCC Models versus Nature– Roy Spencer, Ph.D.
• Don Easterbrook’s AGU paper on potential global cooling – Watts Up With That
• NCDC updates database for Dec08 – NCDC’s own graphic shows decadal cooling trend
• Mr. Gore: Apology Accepted – Huffington Post
• Satellite and Climate Model Evidence Against Substantial Manmade Climate Change – Roy Spencer, Ph.D.
• Global Cooling is Here!  Evidence for Predicting Global Cooling for the Next Three Decades – Icecap (Joe’s blog)
• Global Warming and Some Maths: A Note from William Kininmonth – jennifermarohasy.com
• Sarewitz on Innovation – Prometheus
• Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is Not Pollution

Images and Graphs

• Global average temperature series – Met Office Hadley Centre observations datasets
• “Global Warming” at a glance – JunkScience.com
• Climate Change Science – Includes graphs and figures
• The Frozen Thames 1677.jpg

Media

• Warning signs seen on climate change – Cape Cod Times, March 9, 2009
• Natural Global Warmings Have Become More Moderate – By Dennis Avery  Sunday, March 8, 2009; International conference of man-made warming skeptics, predicting global climate temperatures
• Dark Green Doomsayers – George Will
• Al Gore’s Climate of Extremes Dr. Patrick J. Michaels
• Nuclear Nonsense
• Chicken Littles taken to task
• Ex-Astronaut: Global Warming Is Bunk
• Sammy Wilson should take the lead in reversing climate change policy
• Climate: Warmed or Worshipped
• Will the U.N. Chill Out on Climate Change?
• Examiner.com
  • Battle of the climate scientists and the ‘Hijacking of the American Meteorological Society’
  • Battle of the climate scientists – Gray versus Hansen  part 2
  • Battle of the climate scientists – Gray versus Hansen part 3
• Despite the hot air, the Antarctic is not warming up
• Northern Lights Disappear in Lapland
• The Heartland Institute’s Climate-change Conference
• Czech president attacks Al Gore’s climate campaign
• The Amazing Story Behind the Global Warming Scam
• Al Gore and Venus Envy
• Warming the Warming Debate
• Sunspot cycles may hold key to global warming, cooling
• The Sky Is Falling?
• Professor denies global warming theory
• 2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved
• No Matter What Happens, Someone Will Blame Global Warming
• More hot air from Met Office
• 2008: Another Grim Year for the Global Warmers
• Cooling global warming hysteria just one story of ’08
• Global Warming’s Last Gasp
• The Bear Truth About Arctic Warming
• Global cooling?
• Skepticism on climate change
• Cold reality of fuel bill rises
• Scientists urge caution on global warming
• The ‘consensus’ on climate change is a catastrophe in itself
• Forecasting based on climate change is delusional
• Could the Earth be cooling its heels?
• Lord Nelson and Captain Cook’s shiplogs question climate change theories
• Global Warming Did It! Well, Maybe Not.
• Lonely voice of dissent declared valid
• Will the Economy Kill the Global Warming Hoax?
• Scientists question climate change consensus
• Global Warming’s Fatal Flaw?
• Al Gore’s Doomsday Clock
• Makin’ Up Climate Data… From Junk!
• What’s the point of a cure if the patient may not be sick?
• Evidence doesn’t bare out alarmist claims of global warming
• Opposing view on global warming will be aired
• Bigger trees helping fight against climate change
• UK Met Office’s forecast on human induced climate change – a mixed message?
• Intel chief: Climate change threatens U.S. security
• G20 should send clear signal on climate change: Denmark
• Can geo-engineering rebuild the planet?
• Global Warming – It’s heating up!
• Global Warming Nearing “Critical Threshold” – Financial Times
• Model Sees Severe Climate Change Impact By 2050
• Climate Change Coming Faster Than Expected
• Climate change alert for Bahrain
• ‘CO2 reduction treaties useless’
• Global warming seen worse than predicted
• Ethiopia: Climate Change Taking Toll On Livestock in Southern Lowlands – Study
• Malaria Patterns May Be Altered By Climate Change
• Space manoeuvres & climate change – Pakistan Observer
• Climate change: ‘Feedback’ triggers could amplify peril
• Coal-fired power stations are death factories. Close them – Op-Ed by James Hansen
• Bushfires — just chance, or climate change?
• Climate change will be more devastating than predicted, top scientist warns
• ‘Apocalyptic climate predictions’ mislead the public, say experts
• The Planet Gets Cooler in ’08. Say What? -  Time Magazine
• High CO2 boosts plant respiration, potentially affecting climate and crops
• Climate change takes a mental toll
• Sweden dumps nuclear ban as part of new climate change strategy
• Just science: Opposing views on climate change
• The last word: US and climate change – Rescue of the planet postponed?
• What’s Happening to the Sun?
• Climate change debated
• Economy, Jobs Trump All Other Policy Priorities In 2009
• Briefing: Nuclear power
• Germans to invest £20bn in new UK nuclear plants
• Humans started causing global warming 5,000 years ago, UW study says
• New US military report on global warming raises worry
• Nobel Prize-winning scientist answers critics of climate change
• Record low for climate science
• North Pole Could Be Ice Free in 2008
• ‘Arctic Ice in Death Spiral’

Testimony

Videos

Web Sites and Blogs

Blogs

• Climate Audit
• Real Climate

Web Sites

• The Climate Sceptics – The world’s first up-front political party representing climate sceptics. Australian and New Zealand Scientists against AGW alarmism.
• ICECAP
• Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
• The Carbon Sense Coalition
• The Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI)
• The Global Warming Challenge
• Science & Environmental Policy Project
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
• Solar Influences Data Analysis Center – SIDC (warming neutral)
• The National Snow and Ice Data Center
• Solar Cycle 24 (neutral)
• National Snow and Ice Data Center – state of the Cryosphere
• Climate Change Science – Includes graphs and figures

Wikipedia

• Carbon dioxide
  • data page (properties)
• Cosmic Ray
• Global Warming
• Little Ice Age
• Medieval Warm Pariod
• Milankovitch cycles
• Singer, Fred
• Sunspots
  • Sunspot Number Projection animation
    • Larger version

Work, papers, letters, and other reference material

• Irreversible CO2-Induced Global Warming? – CO2 Science magazine
• Contribution of thermal expansion to present-day sea-level change revisited – Alix Lombarda, Anny Cazenavea, Pierre-Yves Le Traonb, Masayoshi Ishiic
• Recent Ice-Sheet Growth in the Interior of Greenland; Ola M. Johannessen, Kirill Khvorostovsky, Martin W. Miles, Leonid P. Bobylev
• The rising tide: assessing the risks of climate change and human settlements in low elevation coastal zones – Gordon McGranahan, Deborah Balk, Bridget Anderson
• Climate Change and Its Causes: A Discussion about Some Key Issues – Nicola Scafetta, Duke University, Feb. 26/2009
• A 2000-Year Global Temperature Reconstruction Based on Non-Treering Proxies – Loehle, C., and J.H. McCulloch. There are reasons to believe that tree ring data may not properly capture long-term climate changes. In this study, eighteen 2000-year-long series were obtained that were not based on tree ring data.
• Coastal Sensitivity to Sea-level Rise: A Focus on the Mid-Atlantic Region – U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
• Bringing Balance, Disclosure and Due Diligence into Science-based Policymaking, Ross McKitrick, Department of Economics, University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada – “Academic research, even when used used to drive multibillion dollar public investments, is done to standards that would never be acceptable in the business sector.” October 16, 2004 (pdf., 19 pages)
• The Myth of Dangerous Human-Caused Climate Change, R.M. Carter, Professor, Marine Geophysical Laboratory, James Cook University, Townsville,  Queensland, Australia
• Solar Cycle 24: Implications for the United States, David Archibald, International Conference on Climate Change, March, 2008
• North Atlantic Deep Water Formation – CO2 Science
• Permafrost (Impact of Thawing on CO2) — Summary – CO2 Science
• Sea Level Response to Global Warming
• UN Infects Science with Cancer of Global Warming – Edward F. Blick PhD
• Testimony of Patrick J. Michaels to the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment of the Committee of Energy and Commerce, U.S. House of Representatives – “… the rates of warming, on multiple time scales, have now invalidated the midrange suite of IPCC climate models.”  2/12/2009; Dr. Michaels is an active IPCC participant
• Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate – Summary for Policymakers of the Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (50 pages, pdf)
• Public Comment by Dr. Craig D. Iso on EPA’s Advanced Notice of Proposed Regulation of Greenhouse Gases (830 pages, pdf)
• Analysis of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for Greenhouse Gases – Drs. J. Scott Armstrong and Kesten C. Green
• Global Warming Petition Project – over 31,000 American signees, including more than 9,000 PhDs
  • Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide – (12 pages, pdf)
• On The Hijacking of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) by Bill Gray, Professor Emeritus, Colorado State University (pdf)
• Validity of Climate Change Forecasting for Public Policy Decision Making by Kesten C. Green, Willie Soon and J. Scott Armstrong
• Global Warming: Forecasts by Scientists Versus Scientific Forecasts by Kesten C. Green and J. Scott Armstrong (27 pages, pdf, Energy & Environment, Vol. 18, Nos. 7-8, 2007 )
• Convenient Fibs about an Underlying Truth: Al Gore’s Tortured Brief on Climate Change’s Causes, Effects, and Solutions, by Caleb Stewart Rossiter
• Under the Weather – Confessions of a Climate Doubter by Karel Beckman in European Energy Review
• Polar bear populations – Armstrong, Green & Soon ( Interfaces Vol.38 No.5 2008)
• A 1,000-Year History of Sunspot Numbers
• The Physical Evidence of Earth’s Unstoppable 1,500-Year Climate Cycle – Singer & Avery
• Solar Cycles 24 and 25 and Predicted Climate Response by David C. Archibald (9 pages, pdf)
• Solar Influence on Temperature (Global) — Summary
• Is the Earth still recovering from the “Little Ice Age”? – A possible cause of global warming; Syun-Ichi Akasofu, International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks (14 pages, pdf)
• Biological Effects of “Ocean Acidification”
• Permafrost (Degradation) — Summary
• The Permafrost Temperature Record of Barrow, Alaska
• Earth’s Temperature History: Putting the 20th Century in Proper Perspective
• Permafrost Degradation in Central Alaska
• What’s Happening to the Climate of the Arctic?
• There Has Been Little Net Global Warming Over the Past 70 Years
• The Global Surface Air Temperature Record May Be Significantly in Error
• Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change (video links do not work)
• Don Easterbrook’s AGU paper on potential global cooling – Solar Influence on Recurring Global, Decadal, Climate Cycles Recorded by Glacial Fluctuations, Ice Cores, Sea Surface Temperatures, and Historic Measurements Over the Past Millennium – posted on Watts Up With That
• Climate Science: Is It Currently Designed To Answer Questions?
• Kilimanjaro’s Summit Glaciers
• Global Warming every 1,500 Years — What it Means for Engineering
• How many errors can there be in 23 seconds of an advertisement?
• Editorial Bias and the Prediction of Climate Disaster:  The Crisis of Science Communication by Benny Peiser
• No smoking hot spot by Dr. David Evans in The Australian, one of the Kyoto Protocol compliance modelers
• Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
• Unresolved issues with the assessment of multidecadal global land surface temperature trends – Roger A. Pielke Sr. et. al.
• Climate Impact of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide – James Hansen et. al., 1981
• El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Diagnostic Discussion
• James Hansen’s Former NASA Supervisor Declares Himself a Skeptic – US Senate EPW Minority Pages
• A Tutorial on the Basic Physics of Climate Change By David Hafemeister & Peter Schwartz
• NASA Finds Sun-Climate Connection in Old Nile Records NASA/JPL (neutral)

Sometimes, ya just gotta take a break.

I didn’t plan it that way.  It just sort of happened.

In the last several weeks, I’ve not spent much time working on my blogs or web pages other than a new blog, On Climate, where I now have 7 posts.

I’ve been reading quite a bit.  Besides a reading a lot of material on climate change, I’m on my ninth novel — three separate fantasy trilogies.  But for the internet and computers, I would be spending a lot more of my retirement time with my nose in a book — like I have been lately.  Two of the trilogies are rereads — excellent entertainment that doesn’t cost anything except that I couldn’t find the final book of one of them, the one that I’m reading now, so bought a replacement.

I’ve also been hitting the gym pretty heavily.  The one category of blog posts that I’ve been keeping up with is the Wednesday Weigh-In. For some reason, it has helped with the motivation that I was lacking in trying to get fit.  I am now spending 2 hours a day working out at the gym and have been making steady progress.

With a little warmer weather, I’ve been building storage shelving in the second floor of my at this point unheated and not yet finished shop.

Procrastinating like usual, I’m just now getting our taxes done.  Fortunately, our taxes this year are not going to be the horror that last year’s Taxes, Bloody Taxes were.  In fact, we paid so much in state taxes last year that, for the first time in several years, we can actually itemize deductions on the federal return.  Even though I said last year, “future years should be relatively painless,” it’s still been a bit of a pain digging up all of the deductions.  However, despite my tendency to procrastinate, the return is almost done and we didn’t need a tax specialist like last year.

I plan to be back posting on a more regualar basis, but….

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A number of scientists are projecting that global warming is over, for now, and that global average temperatures will be dropping for the next 20 to 30 years.

And what’s the cause?

The sun appears to have entered a less active period and is providing less warmth to the Earth. I discussed one symptom of this in January on Exit78 in The Sun Has Lost Its Spots — and they are still missing over a month and a half later. The sun is in an extended solar minimum that was predicted to end in March 2008 — a year ago.

Aren’t global  temperatures continuing to rise, though?

Some indicators say yes and some indicators say no.

A current chart from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration appears to show global mean temperatures leveling.

A similar chart appears in a UK Met Office pamphlet, which says “The recent slight slowing of the warming is due to a shift towards more-frequent La Niña conditions in the Pacific since 1998. These bring cool water up from the depths of the Pacific Ocean, cooling global temperatures.”

However, a slightly different chart appears on the Met Office web site. It looks here like the “slowing of the warming” has turned into cooling. The Met Office, however, says, “…owing to the unusually cool global average temperature in January 2008, it looked as though smoothed global average temperatures had dropped markedly in recent years, which is misleading.”

I guess we’ll know better with a few more years of data.

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