80 quotes found
"“Global warming” refers to the global-average temperature increase that has been observed over the last one hundred years or more. But to many politicians and the public, the term carries the implication that mankind is responsible for that warming. This website describes evidence from my group’s government-funded research that suggests global warming is mostly natural, and that the climate system is quite insensitive to humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions and aerosol pollution. Believe it or not, very little research has ever been funded to search for natural mechanisms of warming…it has simply been assumed that global warming is manmade. This assumption is rather easy for scientists since we do not have enough accurate global data for a long enough period of time to see whether there are natural warming mechanisms at work."
"You would think that we’d know the Earth’s ‘climate sensitivity’ by now, but it has been surprisingly difficult to determine. How atmospheric processes like clouds and precipitation systems respond to warming is critical, as they are either amplifying the warming, or reducing it. This website currently concentrates on the response of clouds to warming, an issue which I am now convinced the scientific community has totally misinterpreted when they have measured natural, year-to-year fluctuations in the climate system. As a result of that confusion, they have the mistaken belief that climate sensitivity is high, when in fact the satellite evidence suggests climate sensitivity is low."
"A single experience of this awful convulsion of the elements suffices to fasten the memory of its occurrence upon the mind with such a dreadful force that no effort can efface the remembrance of it. The destructive violence of this storm exceeds in its power, fierceness, and grandeur all other phenomena of the atmosphere."
"Climate forecasts (projections) decades into the future have not demonstrated skill in forecasting local, regional, and global climate variables."
"The claim by the IPCC that an imposed climate forcing (such as added atmospheric concentrations of CO2) can work through the parameterizations involved in the atmospheric, land, ocean and continental ice sheet components of the climate model to create skillful global and regional forecasts decades from now is a remarkable statement. That the IPCC states that this is a ‘much more easily solved problem than forecasting weather patterns just weeks from now’ is clearly a ridiculous scientific claim."
"The IPCC WG1 Chapter 3 Report clearly cherrypicked information on the robustness of the land near-surface air temperature to bolster their advocacy of a particular perspective on the role of humans within the climate system. As a result, policymakers and the public have been given a false (or at best an incomplete) assessment of the multi-decadal global average near-surface air temperature trends."
"The role of urban areas within the climate system is yet another human climate effect whose role was minimized in the 2007 IPCC WG1 Report."
"Whether one agrees or not with Mr. Taylor (or the other climatologists whose voices are being stifled), this is an inappropriate politicalization of climate science to promote a particular view."
"Humans are significantly altering the global climate, but in a variety of diverse ways beyond the radiative effect of carbon dioxide. The IPCC assessments have been too conservative in recognizing the importance of these human climate forcings as they alter regional and global climate. These assessments have also not communicated the inability of the models to accurately forecast the spread of possibilities of future climate. The forecasts, therefore, do not provide any skill in quantifying the impact of different mitigation strategies on the actual climate response that would occur."
"The bell just rang in the Tropical Atlantic... Hello Dolly..."
"I hope there will be no more surprises."
"After considerable and sometimes animated in-house discussion of the demise of Ivan..."
"On Hurricane Epsilon in 2005"
"There are no clear reasons, and I am not going to make one up, to explain the recent strengthening of Epsilon."
"I heard that before about Epsilon... haven't you?"
"As you can see...I ran out [of] things to say."
"Since neither I nor the [forecast] models are good enough to precisely know if Ernesto will have an intensity of 64 knots at landfall...which is the border between hurricane and tropical storm intensity and 4 knots above the forecast...a hurricane watch has been issued for a portion of the coast."
"If some of the dynamical models have their way...Juliette could meet her less-than-Shakespearean demise sooner than indicated in the official forecast."
"Bertha HAS to weaken and begin to become extratropical...famous last words."
"In general, the rate of evaporation (m) of a substance in a high vacuum is related to the pressure (p) of the saturated vapor by the equation m=\sqrt{\frac{M}{2\pi RT}}p. Red phosphorus and some other substances probably form exceptions to this rule."
"To me, [it's] extremely interesting that men, perfectly honest, enthusiastic over their work, can so completely fool themselves."
"Science, almost from its beginnings, has been truly international in character. National prejudices disappear completely in the scientist’s search for truth. Medicine also disregards national boundaries. And literature frequently rises to heights that make it international. The scientist is motivated primarily by curiosity and a desire for truth. His attitude is objective rather than subjective. In his work he finds great satisfaction in discovering new facts or new relationships between known facts, but even greater pleasure is derived from seeing his results incorporated into the body of scientific knowledge and from seeing them willingly used by others in the further development of science."
"History proves abundantly that pure science, undertaken without regard to applications to human needs, is usually ultimately of direct benefit to mankind. Within recent years it has become possible for purely scientific work of this character to be carried out with the support of industries, which are, of course, primarily interested in the commercial applications. The scientist who works in this way is frequently especially fortunate in that he not only derives the satisfactions which are characteristic of scientific work in general, but is able to see that many of his results are almost immediately put into a form which directly benefits mankind. Happy indeed is the scientist who not only has the pleasures which I have enumerated, but who also wins the recognition of fellow scientists and of the mankind which ultimately benefits from his endeavors. To my mind, the most important aspect of the Nobel Awards is that they bring home to the masses of the peoples of all nations, a realization of their common interests. They carry to those who have no direct contact with science the international spirit."
"We see that each surface is really a pair of surfaces, so that, where they appear to merge, there are really four surfaces. Continuing this process for another circuit, we see that there are really eight surfaces etc and we finally conclude that there is an infinite complex of surfaces, each extremely close to one or the other of two merging surfaces."
"Mathematicians seem to have no difficulty in creating new concepts faster than the old ones become well understood, and there will undoubtedly always be many challenging problems to solve. nevertheless, I believed that some of the unsolved meteorological problems were more fundamental, and I felt confident that I could contribute to some of their solutions."
"By showing that certain deterministic systems have formal predictability limits, Ed put the last nail in the coffin of the Cartesian universe and fomented what some have called the third scientific revolution of the 20th century, following on the heels of relativity and quantum physics... He was also a perfect gentleman, and through his intelligence, integrity and humility set a very high standard for his and succeeding generations."
"The global warming crowd is using all the surface data, including cities like L.A. to support their claim, and the data is flawed because it's influenced by human development. It's about asphalt, not the atmosphere."
"I'm betting on the sun's increased activity in the last century, and that CO2 doesn't matter much because its effect is overwhelmed by everything else in our atmosphere that also acts as a greenhouse gas, mostly water vapor."
"I'm comfortable with my position because I see clear evidence that climate change is driven mainly by the sun."
"CO2 is far from being the biggest greenhouse gas. Chloroflourocarbons (CFC's) commonly used as refrigerants [are] far worse. Of naturally created GHG's, Methane is 23 times more effective at warming the atmosphere than CO2. Nitrous Oxide is even worse at 296. So far no emergency legislation has been authored to eliminate the effect of cows or dental surgeons."
"The sun is still the number 1 factor in our energy balance. No matter how much people argue about CO2, they can't successfully explain the pre industrial revolution 900-1300AD Medieval Warming Period or the cold 1645-1715 AD Maunder Sunspot Minimum that coincided with European crop failure, famine and disease while linking it with our modern day issues with CO2 to climate change. Yet sunspots and solar cycles can and do explain both."
"If both Mars and Earth are experiencing global warming, then maybe there is a larger phenomenon going on in the Solar System that is causing their global climates to change, like changes in the Sun."
"It's all about the sun. Just take a look at the picture above and notice just how small earth is compared to the sun, or even a large solar flare. Anybody whom thinks the human race has more effect on our global energy balance than an active sun does is just deluding themselves."
"Should a record setting year or string of them be cause for alarm? Personally I don't think so."
"I've been saying this all along… the sun is the Big Kahuna of climate change on earth."
"As I've always said, the sun is the "Big Kahuna" of climate change on Earth. Everything else is secondary, even though man's opinion of his own self importance in the scheme of things often dictates otherwise."
"[T]he folks who would have you believe that our climate is driven by increasing CO2 and nothing else, will continue to ignore the sun, as it serves their agenda to do so."
"The UK's Channel 4 premiered a 75-minute film titled, The Great Global Warming Swindle. Through interviews with prize-winning climate experts and others, this masterful documentary explains the origins of global warming alarmism; factually addresses claims of manmade global climate change; exposes the motivations of organizations, scientists and activists sounding the alarm; and explains why it's been extremely difficult, if not downright career killing, for scientists to question global warming orthodoxy publicly. While presenting hard facts, it is artfully done, making it watchable for the layman and scientist alike."
"The emphasis this week seems to be on the sun, and the fact that maybe its really the sun which has been driving climate change after all. That's what I've been saying for years, because its just unrealistic to ignore the largest and single most important contributor to our planets energy balance and to only focus on made-made CO2 and nothing else."
"So what's easier to believe as the cause of climate change? That a trace gas called CO2 that has increased on earth from about 280 PPM to 380 PPM in the last 100 years is the cause, or that the giant nuclear fireball a thousand times bigger than earth a mere 8 light-minutes away has been getting more active during the same period is the reason?"
"I have to think that because NASA chose to co-author this paper [LaDochy et al., 2007] with researchers at California State University, that some of the statewide "global warming as man-made problem bias" crept into the thinking for the purpose of this paper, i.e. "we need another study to show that its getting hotter so action is justified"."
"Our earth is warmed by a gigantic nuclear fireball, millions of times the mass of earth and a mere 8.5 light-minutes away. One hundred and nine Earths would be required to fit across the Sun's disk, and its interior could hold over 1.3 million Earths. ... You can't just ignore that kind of power. Though it seems some prefer to, since it muddles the results they seek."
"James Carville used to remind Clinton during the '92 campaign that "its the economy, stupid". I say that on the subject of Global Warming: "its the SUN, stupid"."
"It's been warmer than today's climate in the past, much warmer. It has been colder than this climate in the past, much colder. We know this for a fact. We know that this happens with or without our activities. ... So why do we insist that we are the ones causing it when for over half a million years it happened several times and we’ve only had this supposedly evil earth killing CO2 belching technology a mere speck of that time? Because, many believe global warming is real and there are people in our political world who want the masses to hand over power over their lives to them, so they say "let us handle it". To make that transition easier, they trot out this false premise, that we are totally responsible for natural occurrences in the long span of our planetary history."
"When we look at the Anthropogenic Global Warming argument, it seems on the surface that we are completely full of ourselves and yet at the same time terribly dubious, sometimes completely without hope, and utterly given to embracing our own fallibility as a cause célèbre. We show no faith in ourselves by accepting this idea that we’ve caused Global Warming and still none in the idea that we can stop it. These are hollow beliefs put forth to enrich the power of the few whom offer us the way to salvation."
"Often we lose sight of our place in the universe, some never knew at all just how miniscule we humans are compared to everything else."
"So we have three planets now with a warming trend; Earth, Mars, and Neptune. That's not an insignificant coincidence."
"In my opinion, the premise of CO2 burial seems absurd not only because of the lack of supporting evidence for certain climate change, but also due to it's lack of foresight as to the effects of the burial scheme."
"You know, for as much as we humans think we really have control over our planet, nature tends to remind us from time to time that we are just flyspecks in the vastness of space and energy."
"Why would a committee award such a prestigious prize right on the heels of his documentary [An Inconvenient Truth] being proven inaccurate and prone to exaggerations?"
"To me, the fact that the suns magnetic field is linked more closely to earth now lends credence to theories like that of Henrik Svensmark, which points to an extraterrestrial driver of climate change, cosmic rays which form cloud nuclei in our atmosphere, modulated by solar variance."
"I'm not sure the "remarkable Arctic warmth" is real, especially since the disappearance of arctic sea ice during that time has been linked not to warmer temperatures, but to wind patterns by other researchers at NASA."
"The vanity held by many of us puny humans tends to bolster a belief that we control our own destiny within the universe, or are even masters of our own climate control. Recent events such as the PDO shift remind us that the slow but powerful forces of nature remain in control."
"The Surface Stations site has been up two days now, and I’m getting hundreds of registrations across the country from people wanting to get involved in the grass roots effort to photograph, measure, catalog and contribute to the database of weather stations. I’m getting inquires from Congress, Policy think tanks, and bloggers worldwide... I’ve been invited to submit a research paper, and I’m having a lot of fun too. Now I know why I lost the school board election, it was to give me time to do this. Everything happens for a reason."
"There's a tendency to view ourselves, our endeavors, and our accomplishments as the pinnacle. Yet, compared to whats in our solar system, whats in our galaxy, and whats in our universe, we are but a mere speck in the vastness of time, space, mass, and energy."
"And finally we have this, this discovery that Earth's magnetic field can be ripped open and our atmosphere laid bare to the solar wind, much like Mars. Magnetism is underrated in the grand scheme of things, in my opinion. We'd do well to pay more attention to magnetic trends in our corner of the universe and what effects it has on Earthly climate."
"Of course we all know that the human race has historically done better during warm periods. While we've seen a slight warming in the last century, we've also seen a worldwide improvement in the human condition. Warm – what's not to like?"
"That the climate has always changed. It has never been static. In the past it has seen extremes hotter and colder than what we experience today. So change is normal."
"I would say that the polar ice has disappeared in the past. Certainly there seems to be evidence of past climate situations where we may have had virtually no or none during the summertime. In the immediate future, however, I don't think we are going to see that. In fact, we're going through a rebound right now."
"Name calling and labeling does nothing but lower your own level of discourse, when you have no other facts to present, which is why alarmists often resort to name calling and labeling."
"Climate Change Reconsidered, the 2009 report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), is the report on global warming the United Nations' climate panel should have written – but didn't."
"This goes back to the reason why alarmists abandoned the "global warming" term in favor of climate change. They can play this bait and switch, showing changes in climate (which always exist) and then blaming them on CO2. But there is no mechanism ever proposed by anyone where CO2 can change the climate directly without going through the intermediate step of warming. If climate is changing but we are not seeing warming, then the change can't be due to CO2."
"I would say this boils down to a war between the haves and the have-nots. The haves are the people that are getting all the funding. They're getting millions and millions of dollars of funding. The skeptics, we get scraps, we do things on our own. I funded most of the project on my own. And so who should you trust? People that are being paid for an opinion, paid for an output, versus someone who is not being paid for an output, and I think that's the question."
"The warming propaganda machine has lost its momentum and is desperate to get it back. They want to silence Lord Monckton and remove him from the field. To that end they'll say anything. ... Yet when granted a fair forum for debate, it is Monckton who triumphs."
"Global warming had become essentially a business in its own right. There are NGOs, there are organizations, there are whole divisions of universities that have set up to study this, this factor, and so there's lots of money involved and then so I think that there's a tendency to want to keep that going and not really look at what might be different."
""Global warming" suggests a steady linear increase in temperature, but since that isn't happening, proponents have shifted to the more universal term "climate change," which can be liberally applied to just about anything observable in the atmosphere."
"Watts has his critics who take issue with his stance on global warming. He acknowledges a warming trend, but believes humans have only had a slight impact. He points to the sun and the tremendous amount of energy it kicks out as having a far greater role in Earth's heating and cooling."
"While many believe humans are leading contributors to global warming, Watts has theorized the sun may play a bigger role. He said the data deserves a second look, especially because of the large amount of money involved."
"A careful, honest man of science, all [Anthony] Watts would say for sure was that his findings and all the strange cold-weather events of this winter prove only one thing so far -- that "Mother Nature is still in control of things, not us.""
"The indefatigable Anthony Watts, having noticed that the raw data for many individual stations in the GISS dataset had been "processed" so as to turn a century of actual cooling into a century of spurious warming, wondered whether the "processed" data itself had been altered over time with the aim of producing an ever-higher apparent (but bogus) rate of "global warming" over the 20th century. He found that this was indeed the case."
"Take from the air every aëroplane; from the roads every automobile; from the country every train; from the cities every electric light; from ships even wireless apparatus; from oceans all cables; from the land all wires; from shops all motors; from office buildings every elevator, telephone, and typewriter; let epidemics spread at will; let major surgery be impossible—all this and vastly more, the bondage of ignorance, where knowledge now makes us free, would be the terrible catastrophe if the tide of time should but ebb to the childhood days of men still living! ... Therefore, whoever desires progress and prosperity, whoever would advance humanity to a higher plane of civilization, must further the work of the scientist in every way he possibly can."
"The notion that global warming is a fact and will be catastrophic is drilled into people to the point where it seems surprising that anyone would question it, and yet, underlying it is very little evidence at all. Nonetheless, there are statements made of such overt unrealism that I feel embarrassed. I feel it discredits science. I think problems will arise when one will need to depend on scientific judgment, and by ruining our credibility now you leave society with a resource of some importance diminished."
"With respect to science, the assumption behind consensus is that science is a source of authority and that authority increases with the number of scientists. Of course, science is not primarily a source of authority. Rather, it is a particularly effective approach to inquiry and analysis. Skepticism is essential to science; consensus is foreign."
"We're talking of a few tenths of a degree change in temperature. None of it in the last eight years, by the way. And if we had warming, it should be accomplished by less storminess. But because the temperature itself is so unspectacular, we have developed all sorts of fear of prospect scenarios – of flooding, of plague, of increased storminess when the physics says we should see less. I think it's mainly just like little kids locking themselves in dark closets to see how much they can scare each other and themselves."
"Based on the weak argument that the current models used by the IPCC couldn't reproduce the warming from about 1978 to 1998 without some forcing, and that the only forcing that they could think of was man. Even this argument assumes that these models adequately deal with natural internal variability—that is, such naturally occurring cycles as El Niño, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, etc. Yet articles from major modeling centers acknowledged that the failure of these models to anticipate the absence of warming for the past dozen years was due to the failure of these models to account for this natural internal variability. Thus even the basis for the weak IPCC argument for anthropogenic climate change was shown to be false."
"All hell broke loose at the station when our weather guy robbed the bank, and they needed someone who was there to fill in for the day,"
"I already knew from my calculations that there was going to be a heat wave. When the heat wave hit the next day, the job was mine."
"Too many young blacks believe that the field of meteorology is not open to them; still others are not even aware that the field exists, Society, too, has a moral obligation to put aside the past myths about black Americans not only in the meteorological field but in all of the technical fields."
"Too often girls and minorities get discouraged early in high school from pursuing a career in the atmospheric sciences"
"Science fairs “serve as a natural breeding ground for budding scientists” and “as a continual source of female and minority science-minded students."