Sunday July 5, 2009, 6:02 pm
Marc Morano runs the climate denial website ClimateDepot.com for the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a conservative anti-environmentalism think tank. Until spring of 2009, Morano served as communications director for the Republicans on the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Morano commenced work with the committee under Senator James Inhofe, who was majority chairman of the committee until January 2007 and is now minority ranking member. In December 2006 Morano launched a blog on the committee's website that largely promotes the views of climate change skeptics.

Morano is a former journalist with Cybercast News Service (CNS), which is owned by the conservative Media Research Center. CNS and Morano were the first source in May 2004 of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth claims against John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election [1] and in January 2006 of similar smears against Vietnam war veteran John Murtha.

Morano was "previously known as Rush Limbaugh's 'Man in Washington,' as reporter and producer for the Rush Limbaugh Television Show, as well as a former correspondent and producer for American Investigator, the nationally syndicated TV newsmagazine."[1]

I'd seen many of the references before. They ranged from irrelevant to bad science. Some I honestly don't have the expertise to evaluate. But I owe it to my scientific background to evaluate the case with a skeptical eye.

AGW theory says that burning fossil fuels is pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and the increased concentration of these gases is causing average global temperatures to rise.

As in any criminal investigation with no eye witness, we look for motive, means and opportunity.

There is certainly motive. Fossil fuels have been very good to humanity. They have enabled an unprecedented standard of living, keeping us safe, healthy, well-fed, warm, and well-travelled. We have a strong motive to look the other way if their use is endangering our grandchildren.

The means is the "greenhouse effect." Certain molecules in the atmosphere, such as water, carbon dioxide (CO2), and methane (CH4), absorb infrared energy radiated by the earth and reradiate it in random directions, including back to the surface. The net effect is warming that increases with the gases' concentration. The natural levels of these gases alone warm the earth by about 57 degrees, with CO2 contributing about 10 percent of that.

CO2 has had quite the opportunity to cause warming. Its concentration in the atmosphere has increased by more than a third since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Carbon dating and other techniques show that this increase is indeed due to burning of fossil fuels. CO2 has been seen at the scene of the crime. And there is a smoking gun -- global temperatures have gone up along with CO2 concentrations, pretty much as you'd predict based on physics.

CO2 also has a known history of being associated with warming. In fact, paleoclimatological evidence shows a tight relationship between the two. They've gone up and down in sync throughout history.

Still not convinced? I loaded as much publicly available data as I could into Microsoft Excel. The result? An 88 percent correlation between global temperatures and atmospheric CO2 concentration. The temperature correlation peaks about 12 years after the CO2 stimulus, and falls off slowly over decades. This is huge evidence that CO2 drives temperatures, and that the oil we burn today causes the most warming 10 to 15 years from now.

There is also a large (about 80 percent) correlation between CH4 and temperature, although the records for methane are not as extensive. But, as hard as I looked, I found little correlation between temperature and other factors like solar activity. We have sunspot records going back centuries, and there is a small (about 25 percent) correlation between that and global temperatures.

A common criticism of analyses like these is that they can overestimate the correlation between two datasets when both are increasing. So, I did one more analysis in which I removed all increases from both the CO2 and temperature data. Ignoring the fact that both have gone up significantly in the past 130 years, there is still a 43 percent correlation between them.

Is there still a shadow of a doubt in anybody's mind?

Sunday July 5, 2009, 6:49 pm
Please don't pull that "I just whizbanged around on my computer wearing my scientist beanie and Eureeka"

I don't care about the Morano connection to the loathsome Limbaugh....
Morano did work for Imhofe and has heard and recorded the testimonies by over 700 scientists who disagree with CACA....Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Alteration.

Climate Dept provides links to all the information and links to many other reputable discussion sites. People can check the information.

Real Climate on the other hand :

"Real Climate’s Misinformation
From Climate Science — Roger Pielke Sr. @ 7:00 am

Real Climate posted a weblog on June 21 2009 titled “A warning from Copenhagen”. They report on a Synthesis Report of the Copenhagen Congress which was handed over to the Danish Prime Minister Rasmussen in Brussels the previous week.

Real Climate writes

“So what does it say? Our regular readers will hardly be surprised by the key findings from physical climate science, most of which we have already discussed here. Some aspects of climate change are progressing faster than was expected a few years ago – such as rising sea levels, the increase of heat stored in the ocean and the shrinking Arctic sea ice. “The updated estimates of the future global mean sea level rise are about double the IPCC projections from 2007″, says the new report. And it points out that any warming caused will be virtually irreversible for at least a thousand years – because of the long residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere.”

First, what is “physical climate science”? How is this different from “climate science”. In the past, this terminology has been used when authors ignore the biological components of the climate system.

More importantly, however, the author of the weblog makes the statement that the following climate metrics “are progressing faster than was expected a few years ago” ;

1. “rising sea levels”

NOT TRUE; e.g. see the University of Colorado at Boulder Sea Level Change analysis.

Sea level has actually flattened since 2006.

2. “the increase of heat stored in the ocean”

NOT TRUE; see

Update On A Comparison Of Upper Ocean Heat Content Changes With The GISS Model Predictions.

Their has been no statistically significant warming of the upper ocean since 2003.

3. “shrinking Arctic sea ice”

NOT TRUE; see the Northern Hemisphere Sea Ice Anomaly from the University of Illinois Cyrosphere Today website. Since 2008, the anomalies have actually decreased.

These climate metrics might again start following the predictions of the models. However, until and unless they do, the authors of the Copenhagen Congress Synthesis Report and the author of the Real Climate weblog are erroneously communicating the reality of the how the climate system is actually behaving.

Media and policymakers who blindly accept these claims are either naive or are deliberately slanting the science to promote their particular advocacy position.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/30/roger-pielke-senior-on-real-climate-claims-bubkes/

Monday July 6, 2009, 2:34 am
Sherbet... we will just have to go along for the ride in climate change... just bring your umbrellas, jerseys, or summer clothing in your bag... one for each day.

Monday July 6, 2009, 6:53 pm
On climate change
Pielke has a somewhat nuanced position on climate change, which is sometimes taken for skepticism, a label that he explicitly renounces[2][3] . He has said:

the evidence of a human fingerprint on the global and regional climate is incontrovertible as clearly illustrated in the National Research Council report and in our research papers

Monday July 6, 2009, 6:55 pm
forgot the refs
2 Pielke, R.A., 1990: The Hurricane. Routledge Press, London.
3 Cotton, W.R. and R.A. Pielke, 1995: Human impacts on weather and climate, Cambridge University Press, New York

Monday July 6, 2009, 8:48 pm
18 and 13 years is a long tome ago in a field which gets new information daily.

And there are two Piekles, Sr, and Junior.

This is Senior's position now.
http://climatesci.org/category/ra-pielke-sr-position-statements/