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Andy May 4:14 pm on June 22, 2021  

Global Warming is happening, what does it mean?

By Andy May

The concepts and data used to make temperature and climate reconstructions, or estimates, are constantly evolving. Currently, there are over 100,000 global weather stations on land and over 4,500 Argo floats and weather buoys at sea. This is in addition to regular measurements by satellites and ships at sea. The measurement locations are known accurately, the date and time of each measurement is known, and the instruments are mostly accurate to ±0.5°C or better. Thus, we can calculate a reasonable global average surface temperature. However, the farther we go into the past the fewer measurements we have. Prior to 2005, the sea-surface measurements deteriorate quickly and prior to 1950 the land-based weather station network is quite poor, especially in the Southern Hemisphere. Before 1850, the coverage is so poor as to be unusable for estimating a global average temperature. Prior to 1714 the calibrated thermometer had not even been invented; the world had to wait for Gabriel Fahrenheit.

Is the global average temperature a useful climate metric? How do we compare today’s global or hemispheric temperature to the past? Modern instruments covering the globe have only been in place since 2005, plus or minus a few years. If we have accurate measurements since 2005, how do we compare them to global temperatures hundreds or thousands of years ago? The world has warmed 0.8°C since 1950 and 0.3°C since 2005, that doesn’t sound very scary. This two-part series will investigate these questions. We will propose a solution to the problem in a second post that should be up in a day or two.

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Andy May 8:59 am on June 6, 2021  

Fact Checking the Fact Checkers

This is a re-post from the CO2 Coalition, here. Re-posted with permission.

[Ed. Note] The number of opinion pieces disguised as “Fact Checks,” and the use of them to censor one side of scientific debates has reached epidemic proportions. We need to fight back against this abhorrent trend. Science is all about debate. The debate must be with well-founded evidence, with objective reason, without personal attacks, and with both sides represented. The following post is long, but addresses many climate alarmist generated media myths quite well and authoritatively. AM

By Gregory Wrightstone, Managing Director at the CO2 Coalition, expert reviewer of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, author of Inconvenient Facts: The science that Al Gore doesn’t want you to know.

On Earth Day this year, the Washington Times published an op-ed that I wrote titled “There is no climate emergency – We love CO2 and so should you.” Not long after publication, the paper’s Facebook post on the commentary was labeled “false and misleading” and their ad for it was rejected. This was based on a lengthy “fact-check” titled Washington Times presents list of false and misleading statements about the impacts of CO2 and climate change by Climate Feedback (CF). It was composed by eight scientists and upon detailed review of their “fact-check,” it became clear why they were not labeled “experts.”

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Andy May 4:12 pm on June 2, 2021  

Scientific American steps in it

By Andy May

The left-wing Scientific American published a so-called review of Steven Koonin’s new book, Unsettled, by a number of prominent left-wing scientists. The article is headed by the mandatory sunset photo of steam coming out of powerplant chimneys. The article is not really a review, their substantive claims are very weak, it is really a hit piece to trash Koonin and his reputation in the best Naomi Oreskes’ and Union of Concerned Scientists’ odious style. But throwing rocks from glass houses invites them to be thrown back, and what goes around comes around. What little scientific content is present in the article is dealt with at the end of this post, their scientific arguments are as vacuous as their attacks on Koonin.

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Andy May 9:22 am on June 1, 2021  

A post is banned

By Andy May

In 2017 I wrote a post analyzing the data and literature surrounding the human impact on Earth’s environment. The analysis uses the U.N. IPCC’s definition of environmental harm. The sources are peer-reviewed articles or government and U.N. agencies. It is a very straightforward reporting of the facts and data.

That Linkedin banned David’s recommendation of the post shows we are becoming a totalitarian state, with thought and opinions regulated by corporate overlords. Honest, free discussion based on observations and straightforward statistical analysis is banned.

Obviously, Linkedin did not like the conclusion of the post:

We are living in a time of nearly boundless prosperity. The rate of poverty has plunged to unimaginable lows. This is a time when the definition of poverty in the United States is set so high, a poor person in the U.S. would be the envy of any wealthy person prior to World War II. Inequality in the world is at its lowest level ever and decreasing at a rapid rate. People who were born in abject poverty can now become doctors and lawyers. Why we still have doomsayers predicting the end of the world is beyond my understanding.

I guess if you hate humanity and yourself, that would be offensive.

Andy May 3:40 pm on May 24, 2021  

The Union of Concerned Scientists tries to “cancel” Steve Koonin

By Andy May

I’ve written about the far left-wing Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and their anti-democratic attempts to suppress free-speech and free-thought before (see here). There are more details about their chicanery in my latest book: Politics and Climate Science: A History. ExxonMobil totally humiliated them and their gang when they tried to accuse the company of suppressing or hiding “evidence” that global warming was dangerous. The gang included Naomi Oreskes, who tried to convince a judge, through a “content analysis,” that ExxonMobil said one thing publicly and another privately regarding the supposed dangers of climate change. Too bad her analysis was ripped to shreds by the original content analysis expert Kimberly Neuendorf in court, who wrote:

“[Oreskes’ analysis] does not support the study’s conclusions because of a variety of fundamental errors in their analysis. S&O’s content analysis lacks reliability, validity, objectivity, generalizability, and replicability. ” (May, 2020c, p. 169).

Peter Frumhoff, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, was one of the principal organizers of the ExxonKnew campaign and even paid the travel expenses of the state Attorneys General attending the various campaign meetings and announcements. They have been up to their eyeballs in these anti-free-speech campaigns ever since. They are not nice people.

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Andy May 2:57 pm on May 16, 2021  

Fact checking Steven Koonin’s Fact Checkers

By Andy May

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published a review of Steven Koonin’s new book Unsettled on April 25, a little over a week before it went on sale. A blog called “Climate Feedback” published a “Fact Check” of the book review on May 3rd, the day before the book came out. This so-called fact check was used by Facebook to attempt to discredit the WSJ review and the book itself whenever a post linked to the book review.

The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board objected to this practice with a strongly worded editorial. They pointed out the so-called “fact check” was not checking anything, but simply arguing against Koonin’s analysis. Arguing with Koonin is fine, arguing is an important part of science, but don’t call it a fact check. The “fact check” blog post doesn’t contradict or challenge anything in Koonin’s book. Koonin provides a rebuttal in today’s WSJ here.

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Andy May 2:59 pm on May 1, 2021  

A Review of Temperature Reconstructions

By Andy May

This is an update to a 2016 post; the original post is here.

We often hear that the planet is warming faster than ever before, or at the fastest rate since the beginning of the industrial era! Is it true? We haven’t had thermometers for very long. How do thermometer readings compare to temperature proxies like ice cores and tree rings? Greenland is a good place to start, we see the high resolution Greenland ice core temperatures all the time. How accurate are they? How do Greenland temperatures compare to temperatures elsewhere?

In previous posts (here and here), I’ve compared historical events to the Alley and Kobashi GISP2 Central Greenland Temperature reconstructions for the past 4,000 years. Unfortunately, these two reconstructions are very different. Steve McIntyre suggested I consider a third reconstruction by Bo Vinther. Vinther’s data can be found here. Unfortunately, Vinther is significantly different from the other two. Nothing agrees very well.

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Andy May 6:20 am on May 1, 2021  

The CO2 Shift; Ice Age to Gas Age

Guest Post by Renee Hannon

Introduction
This post examines CO2 data collected from Antarctic ice cores and compares CO2 measurements in both ice age and gas age. The age of trapped gas in ice varies dramatically across the Antarctic and is dependent on accumulation rates. To compensate for this age difference, peer reviewed studies use a simple method of shifting CO2 measurements from the core ice age to match a younger CO2 gas age.

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Andy May 7:26 am on April 28, 2021  

Clouds and Global Warming

By Andy May

This post is inspired by an old post on the CERES cloud data by Willis Eschenbach that I’ve read and re-read a lot, “Estimating Cloud Feedback Using CERES Data.” The reason for my interest is I had trouble understanding it, but it looked fascinating because Willis was comparing CERES measured cloud data to IPCC modeled cloud feedback. I love obscure, back-alley comparisons of models and data. They tend to show model weakness. I learned this as a petrophysical modeler.

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Andy May 6:08 am on April 26, 2021  

Unsettled, Steven Koonin’s new book

By Andy May

I was honored to be chosen by NYU Professor Steven E. Koonin to review his wonderful new book, Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What it Doesn’t, and Why it Matters. According to Amazon.com, if you order the Kindle version (Koonin, 2021) now, it will download on May 4th. Professor Koonin sent me a near final draft to read and comment on in November and I nitpicked it a bit, but the draft was in good shape even then. It is better now. I received a signed early copy a couple of weeks ago, but I pre-ordered a Kindle version anyway for easy access, and I recommend you do as well. This is an important book, not only because Koonin is a brilliant and famous physicist, but also because of the content. It is a good overview of the science, but also important philosophically.

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