Climate Scientist quitting because of political activism of her profession

Ted Cruz dismantles Sierra Club president on Global Warming

Ted Cruz dismantles Sierra Club President Aaron Mair in a congressional meeting on the issue of Global Warming alarmism yesterday. Whether you believe the earth is warming or not. I believe that that probably is the long-term trend, although what is causing it seems less clear. But you've got to find the anti-scientific mentality of the people demanding that everyone else accept it or else to be manifestly disturbing.

Listen to Mair's blatant appeal to authority when confronted with what the actual objective satellite data say about the pause in global warming over the past 18 years. In fact, he doesn't even seem to know what the "pause" is or that it is actually a term used by Warming proponents.

Can you be blamed for not trusting the authorities cited by these people (which de facto places them in the position of authorities for your own opinions)? Are you really supposed to believe so-called experts (who have been well-plied with grant money for taking the positions they take) in the face of evidence?

And do the 97 percent of climate scientists cited by Mair deny the pause? This seemed to be his assumption, but, as far as I know, these scientists were never asked that question.

I sat next to a recently retired climate scientist earlier this year. He was a political conservative, but believed that the evidence was definitive that the globe was warming over the long term. He said that he strongly disagreed with many conservatives who just denied that the earth was warming, but equally disturbed by how his liberal friends tried to sell the idea.

No wonder.

Oh, and here is one Warmer blog that calls Cruz's attempt to confront Mair with actual evidence, "bullying." This is priceless.

If someone argues this badly for a position, it makes you want to reject it even if you are inclined to believe it. In this sense, the Warmers have only themselves to blame if they can't convince people of their position.

As it turns out, we are not all going to die

I checked in last night on CNN and realized that we were in for another storm. No, not the weather kind, but the blizzard of news reports on how the snow blizzard that was hitting the Northeast. I remarked to my wife about the hysteria that hits the media every time we have a few inches of snow or a tropical storm. "You would think these people had never seen a snowstorm," I said.

Every time inclement weather hits, the media goes nuts and its going to be the storm of the century and everyone should hunker down in their basements and we're all going to die.

BNN's Blanderson Stupor (BNN: Blithering News Network): We have our correspondent Rolf Schlitzer on the scene in New York. Rolf, how is it looking?
Rolf: Blanderson, although I haven't actually seen one, we have one report from Queens of a snowflake actually having been sighted. This could mean that we are all going to die.
Blanderson: This is terrible, Rolf. How many people have died already?
Rolf: What we're being told now by city officials is that there are up to 25 casualties already.
Blanderson: From the storm?
Rolf: No, Blanderson. Officials say that other than several people who were trampled to death at grocery stores after hearing media reports, most deaths are largely the result of suicide.
Blanderson: Suicide?
Rolf: Yes, Blanderson. They say these people were so frightened by news reports that they were going to die that some just decided to get it over with quickly. Others, say officials, just simply couldn't bear the thought of a lifetime of hysterical news reports every time a snowflake fell in Manhattan. In any case, it is a terrible tragedy and probably means ...
Blanderson: That we're all going to die"
Rolf: Yes, Blanderson. Blanderson: Thank you, Rolf. When we come back, we'll tell you about how one family in Long Island is preparing for rising sea levels that could be another indication that we're all going to die. Stay tuned.

Physicist Peter Woit teaches at Columbia University. He reports (Snowpocalypse, 2015) that after all the blizzard hype and the forced shutdowns of businesses, transportation and order to stay home, it was all for naught:

Columbia never used to shut down at all, New York City never used to shut down the transit system, and the states never used to shut down all roadways. Until the past decade or so people tried to go about their business here in the winter, taking action to shut things down only once snow had arrived and was causing a problem. The US has now become a nation of hysterics, with media-driven hype frightening everyone about everything, and public officials desperately taking action to protect the citizenry from imaginary threats.

Phew. So I guess we're not all going to die.

Pittsburgh Tribune editorial calls Warmer group "Chicken Littles"

The Pittsburgh Tribune editorial earlier this week: "... the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is preparing a report so dire that it hardly seems to concern the same Earth on which the rest of humanity lives":

As its credibility dwindles due to its slanted “science” and politically motivated advocacy of anti-growth diktats, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is preparing a report so dire that it hardly seems to concern the same Earth on which the rest of humanity lives.

Read more here. HT: Watt's Up with That?

Emperor penguins threatened by climate scientists

The judgment of climate scientists is apparently suffering from the fact that they are drowning in grant money to promote the idea of a global crisis. Try to make sense of these two headlines in recent days:

July 6 NPR Headline: "Study Shows Penguins Endangered By Waning Antarctic Ice." This is priceless. If you look at the interview of Hal Caswell, the author of this "study," what you notice is he never says that the penguins are actually endangered now (nor does the abstract of the study itself). It's all his "anticipation." This is all, he says, in the interest of getting Emperor penguins on the endangered species list which "would provide more impetus to take action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and slowing or halting climate change." The very impetus of the study is political.

But what is all this about "waning Antarctic Ice"? which brings us to the second headline:

July 5 Daily Mail: "Global warming computer models confounded as Antarctic sea ice hits new record high with 2.1 million square miles more than is usual for time of year." What was that about "waning ? Yup: An area the size of Greenland, which is normally open water, is frozen. And this isn't just an anomaly. This has apparently been the trend in recent years--not only in Antarctica, but the entire southern hemisphere.

And as we know, climate scientists always have an escape hatch. Here is Caswell talking about the poor penguins, who lose no matter what happens:

So this species breeds in colonies on sea ice. They make this long march from the edge of the ocean to breed in the middle of the winter. So if there's too much sea ice, that trudge to bring food to the chicks gets longer and more energetically expensive for the penguins, and this cuts down on their breeding success. On the other hand, if there's too little sea ice, then the basis of the Antarctic food web is not as productive.

They can't win! The climatologists have them coming and going. They don't stand a chance. But it saves climate scientists in the end because (just as both cold and warm weather confirm their theory) it keeps their theory unfalsifiable.

Climate Change in 12 Minutes

More indication that there may be as much Global Warming (to steal a phrase from David Berlinski) as there is funding available to find it:

 

The End is Near as a scientific theory: New White House climate report, by Henny Penny

Yesterday's big news was the White House report on climate change in which Americans were told, after a winter which featured some of the coldest temperatures on record, that we are all going to die of heat and that we'd better do something about it.

Now if you say something such as that we have had "a winter which featured some of the coldest temperatures on record" in the context of Global Warming, you expose yourself to the Global Warming Hal Lindsays who will scold you for confusing weather with climate. "Weather," they say, refers to specific meteorological events whereas "climate" refers to the big meteorological picture. Particular weather events in and of themselves, we are told, can never be used as definitive evidence in regard to climate.

You can't say, for example, that the past cold winter (or, in my region two late springs in a row) was evidence against Global Warming. That is a weather statement. That there is Global Warming is something different: it is a climate statement.

The general idea, I guess, is that no one weather event can count against a general theory which takes account of all weather events.

But, as I have said before, this distinction―which, when uttered, is done with the air of impartiality and the pretension that it is universal―is, in fact, only observed when someone who disagrees with some basic tenet of Global Warming alarmism makes a statement. It is never brought up when Global Warming alarmists make similar statements.

If a detractor points to a cold winter, he is hooted down by proponents for not observing the distinction. But if supporter points to warm summer, you can hear the crickets chirping.

If I report that for the last two years in Kentucky we have experienced two unusually short and cool summers and say that is evidence against the Global Warming, I am committing an egregious scientific error of epic proportions. But if I live on the Gulf coast and I suffer property damage from a hurricane and blame it on Global Warming, I can be assured of comforting words from the same crowd.

In other words, anyone who disagrees with Global Warming is under the stricture never to confuse the two, whereas Global Warming proponents can violate the distinction with impunity. Not only do warmers get all the grant money: They also get to operate under a less stringent set of rhetorical rules.

There is a whole category of what we call "extreme weather events" used as illustrations of Global Warming and they never seem to violate the rule that you can't cite them in evidence for your view of climate. In fact, not only can you cite them, you can cite events that would otherwise be disconfirming. As I have also repeatedly pointed out, any kind of weather event can be used to confirm the theory and no weather event can be used to disconfirm it.

It's unfalsifiable. But somehow it's still science. If you want an example of this, just look at the coverage of the White House report:

Climate change is here and will only worsen. Get used to more flooding, wildfires and drought, depending on where you live. Cities and states across America already are spending lots of money to respond.

Flooding is the opposite of drought. But both confirm the theory. (It's also interesting that the mere spending of money to fight Global Warming comes across in some of these reports as evidence for Global Warming!)

But remember, it is only conservative Republicans who politicize science.

Cold weather result of global warming, says Time

If you use cold weather to question global warming, then you're a fanatic. But if you use cold weather to support global warming, you're a reasonable person. Welcome to Global Warming Wonderland.

So I come inside from getting firewood, out of the coldest weather I can remember ever experiencing here in Kentucky, take my coat off, sit down at my computer to see about the latest news. And what to my wondering eyes should appear but a news story from Time magazine arguing that the extreme sub-zero temperatures are the result of global warming.

Now whenever I say anything on this blog that might even remotely suggest that cold weather occurrence might be disconfirming evidence in relation to global warming (whatever the positive evidence may be), the men on the chessboard get up and tell me where to go.

But when someone makes the opposite argument―that cold weather is confirming evidence for global warming―they don't do anything at all.

This is the curious logic of the global warming crowd: Warm weather is evidence for global warming and cold weather is evidence for global warming. In fact, any weather can be interpreted as evidence for global warming.

And if I ever get confused by this logic, I just remember what the dormouse said.

Curiously, these are the same people who will give you long sermons on how any theory that purports to be scientific must be falsifiable. Falsifiable theories, of course, must allow for falsifying data. Here we have a theory that not only does not admit any datum as falsifiable, but considers any datum to be a verifying case.

How, you ask, could the people who take this position not accept any particular weather event as even potentially falsifying and yet think their theory is scientific?

Go ask Alice, I think she'll know.

Climate change expedition trapped in Antartica. In the ice. In summer.

A funny thing happened on the way to global warming: namely, everybody froze.

An expedition of twenty-some climate scientists and their groupies were going to Antarctica to conduct some wildlife and weather observations when their boat got stuck in the above normal amounts of summer sea ice. As it turns out, the ice extent in Antarctica has reached record levels this year.

Rick Perry: 1, NCSE: 0: National Center for Science Education official flubs his science history in critique of Rick Perry

In last night's Republican candidates debate at the Reagan library, Texas Governor Rick Perry suggested that climate science was still unsettled on the issue of human-induced global warming. In his answer to a media panelist's question, he compared the current question of whether humans are unquestionably causing global warming to Galileo's situation in relation to the scientific community and the Church of the 17th century: "'Just because you have a group of scientists that stood up and said, this is the fact'," said Perry, "… Galileo got outvoted for a spell."

You just knew Scientoids would be all over this. Sure enough, here they come. And in the battle to preserve the myths of scientific history, who should be the first to show up for duty but the National Center for Science Education's Josh Rosenau, who claims Perry got it wrong:

His opening passage, like his comments on evolution, seem to forthrightly endorse the legitimacy of letting religious and political authority suppress ("outvote," in his words) scientific results. By the time Galileo was publishing on heliocentrism, the idea was already circulating and widely accepted in scientific circles, including Jesuits. He wasn't outvoted by scientists, he was outvoted by the political and religious leadership of his country. [Emphasis in original]

Not only did Perry not get it wrong, he got it more right that Rosenau.

For one thing, was Perry necessarily saying that the majority rules in science? If he was (which, I'm sorry, just isn't clear here), then he would be in no worse a position than defenders of Darwinist dogmatism and Meteorological End Times like Rosenau, who regularly point to the level of support among those working in their fields as evidence that their beliefs are true. If there's something wrong with Perry doing it, then why isn't there something wrong with scientists doing it?

Secondly, let's look at Josh's claim about Galileo. For one thing, he assumes that the issue of the Galileo episode was the truth of the heliocentrism. Where is my wrong answer buzzer? Anyone who is even vaguely familiar with what happened between Galileo and the Church (as opposed to the historical myths about it) knows that this was not the issue. The issue was the epistemological status of the theory--whether it was a legitimate hypothesis or a proven fact. At the time of the controversy, it was not a proven fact and there were a number of unanswered problems with it--a fact acknowledged by both scientists (such as they were) and Church officials.

Galileo was, by all accounts, a reckless and arrogant controversialist who demanded that others accept his theories before he had adequately documented them, and demanded that his theological views be acknowledged as legitimate despite his demonstrable lack of expertise in the field. In fact, he was so reckless and arrogant, he managed even to alienate his friends.

So when we come to Josh's final point that "He wasn't outvoted by scientists, he was outvoted by the political and religious leadership of his country," we are taken from a complete misunderstanding of history to a complete misrepresentation of it: The political and religious leadership of Galileo's day opposed heliocentrism.

Really?

In reality most of the scientists of the time opposed it, since most of the university scholars working in what was then natural philosophy (it wasn't even called "science" until the 19th century) believed in a version of Aristotelian teaching that precluded Copernicanism. Church officials of the time largely accepted Copernicus' theory as better fitting the data than the Ptolemaic theory, but were content to let the scholars duke it out. And a number of high Church officials not only didn't oppose Galileo's heliocentrism, but encouraged his writings on the issue, include a future pope.

One of the ironies here is that one of the things the Church was defending was proper scientific methodology: you have to actually prove your theories, and until they are proven, you need to keep your powder dry.

Next thing you know, Josh will be passing along the historical canard that Galileo was tortured for his beliefs and burned at the stake.

The NCSE gets a booby prize here. Score the win for Perry.

Is the Opposition to Climate Change Ecological or Technological?

by Thomas Cothran

Let's set aside the empirical question concerning climate change (i.e., is human activity causing dangerous weather patterns) for a moment and ask about what sort of politics under-girds the climate change movement.

I propose that the concealed political agenda behind much of climate change advocacy is, at bottom, anti-environmental. The reason behind the regulations issued in response to climate change warnings is precisely the desire to avoid real change; environmental regulations seek to preserve technological society. If we could find a new source of energy in nature, a cleaner fuel, and so on, we could maintain our environmental ideology--that nature exists primarily to be exploited by a form of industrial capitalism set free from the natural limits of human needs.

Climate change advocacy warns of an apocalypse that will end life as we know it, precisely because it seeks to protect life as we live it. As the global economy increasingly becomes driven not by the satisfactions of basic human desires but by profits abstracted from fundamental human needs, the natural limitations on industrial activity are increasingly abandoned; for profit, unlike human needs, has no upper limit.

The fundamentally violent relation of human beings to nature that regards nature primarily as a resource to be appropriated rather than as a creation that is good in itself, a thing to be safeguarded rather than assaulted, is not called into question by the climate change movement but rather sublated, concealed, made more sustainable.

Climate change advocacy therefore does not seek to end the assault on the earth, but to extend it, to make it more complete, to make it more cunning.

Mild winter in Britain? What mild winter in Britain?

Just in case you were wondering about predictions of exactly how Near the End Is, you might want to check out the situation at The Met Office in England, a frequently cited authority on Global Warming. Turns out the Met Office predicted a mild winter in England this year.

Oops.

As anyone listening to the news knows, England is now experiencing what appears to be the coldest December on record, "the worst December weather the UK has seen for almost 30 years."

But the even more interesting thing is that the Met Office is now denying that it made this prediction:

The Met Office has not issued a seasonal forecast to the public and categorically denies forecasting a ‘mild winter’ as suggested by Boris Johnson in his column in the Daily Telegraph.

But the blog Autonomous Mind points out that the Met Office, along with experiencing a warm weather deficiency, is also experiencing a memory deficiency. Here, says Autonomous Mind, is what the Met Office was saying in October:

The latest data comes in the form of a December to February temperature map on the Met Office’s website.

The eastern half of England, Cornwall, Scotland and Northern Ireland is in for temperatures above the 3.7C (38.6F) average, more than 2C warmer than last winter.

The map also shows a 40 per cent to 60 per cent probability that western England and Wales will be warmer than 3.7C (38.6F), with a much smaller chance of average or below-average temperatures.

But it doesn't apparently matter, says the Met Office:

Following public research, the Met Office no longer issues long-range forecasts for the general public...

Say whut? The organization that is predicting long term Global Warming is no longer predicting long term Global Warming?

What they mean, of course, is that they are not making forecasts about the weather months in advance, which, in relation to their Global Warming climate predictions, are short term forecasts. But here's the problem, if they can't get short term weather forecasts right, then how can they be trusted with long term climate forecasts?

We have already pointed out on this blog how all weather events are now considered to confirm the Global Warming hypothesis. In a previous post, one representative of the Chicken Little contingent went great lengths and a lot of effort to argue that my citations of articles showing that both short term cold weather events AND short term warm weather events are both taken as confirming the Global Warming theory were somehow misrepresenting the articles.

But all of the bluster from this particular individual doesn't change the fact that this is exactly what the articles suggested: that warm weather in Europe and lack of snow is somehow and indication of Global Warming and that record short term cold and increased snowfall are also confirmation of it. Both are to be taken as consisted with the Hypothesis.

So our first Global Warming Observation here at Vital Remnants is this:

I. All short term weather events are taken to confirm the Global Warming Hypothesis. No short term weather evidence can be considered to disconfirm long term predictions of Global Warming. This makes it very difficult to consider the theory scientific, since one of the criteria used by the Scientizers is that science must be falsifiable. It is scientific only to the extent that it has long-term falsifiability. So in the short term, anyone who points to colder weather and snowfall anomalies as reason to doubt the Hypothesis, can conveniently be dismissed as a crank while anyone who uses warm weather and the exact same snowfall anomalies as evidence for the Hypothesis is celebrated--or, if properly situated academically, given more grant money. It also makes it quite convenient for adherents of the Hypothesis, since no one is allowed to say that they are blowing smoke for another 40 years.

But now we have our second Global Warming Observation:

II. Long term Global Warming predictions must be considered reliable in spite of the inability to get short term predictions right. In other words, despite blowing it on short term weather predictions, which would seem to be more simple and straightforward than long-term climate predictions, we are still supposed to believe that the long-term climate predictions are correct and to spend lots of taxpayer money on that assumption. In other words, in those cases in which their predictive capability can actually be tested now, their ability to predict can look very poor, but in those cases in which their predictive capabilities cannot be tested, we are supposed to trust them.

So when you hear in the media say that snow is "now just at thing of the past," and "snow is starting to disappear from our lives" in 2000, for example, and then your country experiences disruptive snow in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010, you tend to begin to doubt whether these people really can be trusted to tell you what it is going to be like in 40 years.

So there they are. And I will have to warn all those who will now descend on me telling me how ignorant I am about Global Warming that I will have to insist that my assertions must be dealt with according to the same rules they demand apply to their assertions: they cannot be disconfirmed by short term evidence, and their inaccuracy in areas in which they are testable cannot be taken as an indication of unreliability in areas in which they are not testable.

More evidence for Global Warming

This just in from England's The Daily Mail:

The Big Freeze will hold us in its grip for at least another month, forecasters warn.

Arctic conditions are expected to last through the Christmas and New Year bank holidays and beyond.

With temperatures expected to fall to -15c (5f), the Met Office said this is ‘almost certain’ to become the coldest December since records began in 1910.

Yesterday’s snowfall was largely in the South and West, and in Wales while the South was braced last night for another 10in of snow accompanied by treacherous ice.

Now we go back to Global War ..., er, I mean Climate Change alarmists to explain why this is evidence for Global Warming...

HT: Anthony Watts

Why did BBC take down "Coldest December day on record" headline

Now you see it, now you don't.

It's still available on a screen capture, but the BBC's story on the "Coldest December day on record" suddenly got turned into "Record cold continues." Strange how that works.

If we said the former, of course, it would not adequately communicate the Global Warming idea that The End Is Near. The knowledge that The Sky Is Falling might not be entirely clear.

Personally, I am comforted to know that there are attentive monitors on hand to make sure that we do not deviate from the party line on these things.

HT: Anthony Watts

The End is Near for Redwoods. No, wait, ... Nevermind

And just when I was convinced that The End was really Near, I find out that The End is not really Here, although It may be Here tomorrow--and, if you think about it, tomorrow is fairly Near anyway. So I am planning on remaining in a perpetual state of temporary panic.

The California redwoods, we were told, just last February, were in dire need of being worried about. Why? Because "climate change may be reducing this crucial fog cover." The Nearness of the End, upon hearing such news, seemed Near indeed.

Now, however, we are told that, far from fog disappearing and putting Redwoods into ... spasms of foglessness (and incidentally the red underline on that word generated by my blog software is now telling me that it has never heard of this word before--get a grip Blogspot!) that there is plenty of fog. In fact:

The Bay Area just had its foggiest May in 50 years. And thanks to global warming, it's about to get even foggier.

That's the conclusion of several state researchers, whose soon-to-be-published study predicts that even with average temperatures on the rise, the mercury won't be soaring everywhere.

So does that mean that the Redwoods will benefit? If the lack of fog was going to kill then, then would an abundance of it perk them up? No word for the Warmers on this one.

But one never knows what we will be told next. As for me and my house we will continue to dig the bunker and store essential provisions for the next published report showing that the End is, if not Near, Particularly Close.

HT: Watts Up With That?

Facebook readers can access "Vital Remnants," Martin Cothran's weblog on politics and culture here.

Some groups are "green" in more ways that one

Like I've always said: Follow the money. There are big profits to be made in green technology, and the multi-national corporations aren't leaving anything to chance. And many Green groups, who purport to be independent voices on environmental issues, may well be on the take.

And why is it that the President of BP, yes that BP, is on the advisory board of the Earth Institute?

Check out the Times Higher Education Supplement for an eye-opening exposé.

HT: Bishop Hill

Could biofuels ruin the environment?

First there was Climategate. Now another group of Warmers has been caught hiding data that reflects badly on biofuels. Here's Marlo Lewis at Globalwarming.org:

Reuters reports that it used freedom of information laws to obtain a copy of text that was stripped from a December 2009 European Union study on biofuels. The hidden portion of the study found that biodiesel fuel made from North American soybeans has an indirect carbon footprint of 339.9 kilograms of CO2 per gigajoule — about four times larger than standard diesel from petroleum.

The suppressed analysis jibes with Fargione et a. (2008) and Searchinger et al. (2009), who found that CO2 emissions from the land use changes associated with biofuel production exceed the emissions avoided by combusting biofuels instead of petroleum-based fuels.

“The EU’s executive European Commission said it had not doctored the report to hide the evidence, but only to allow a deeper analysis before publishing,” Reuters reports. Uh huh. And if the analysts had found that biodiesel has a much smaller footprint than standard diesel, the Commission would have deep-sixed that study too pending a “deeper analysis.” Right!

Read the rest here.

When your predictions go sour, just go into denial.

One Brow, a frequent commenter on this blog, has decided to give me a lecture on logic--and science. And then, just to top it off, he adds a short critique on my use of English. His point would be more convincing if he didn't utter sentences such as this one:

It turns out his English is not nearly sufficient to warrant [Cothran's] casting of dispersion on other posters, or maybe it's his grade-school-level-science that is lacking.

Casting "dispersion"? I think he means casting "aspersion." Normally I wouldn't take note of it, but when it occurs in a passage remarking on my command of English, it's hard to ignore.

I don't mind be corrected on my use of English; I only request that those doing so speak it more competently than I.

One Brow argues that increased snowfall is not necessarily an indication of colder weather, and that therefore more snowfall is not evidence against Global Warming. But how can increased snowfall not be evidence against Global Warming if reduced snowfall is evidence for it? In fact, one of the things we've been told repeatedly is that reduced snowfall is the result of Global Warming:



What a comfortable little ideological world these people live in. Absolutely nothing counts against you! You can make all kinds of predictions, and when something completely different happens, you just shrug your shoulders and say that it doesn't matter.

And what is that about scientific theories being falsifiable? If a theory makes a prediction, and the exact opposite thing happens, in what ideological world is that not evidence against the theory that made the prediction?

Here is One Brow's argument:

Notice the slide from "the record level of snowfalls" to "individual cool weather events"? However, it snows regularly during individual warm-weather events in places like Nome (where even a warm winter day can be well below freezing), while I certainly experienced a few cold-weather events this year with no snow at all falling from the sky. The phenomena are distinct, and treating record snowfalls as indicative of cold weather is a non sequitur.

But it's the IPCC saying that Global Warming is inconsistent with increased snowfall. One Brow's argument is with them, not me.

But it's not just snowfall per se; it's also where the snowfall is happening:

As we have been discussing on WUWT, three of the last four months have seen top ten Northern Hemisphere snow extents and the decadal trend has been towards increasing (and above normal) snow extent during the autumn and winter. It appears that this month will achieve snow extent among the top two Februaries on record.

As you can see in the Rutgers University maps below for mid-February, the excess snow cover is necessarily found at lower latitudes. Snow cover radiates out from the pole, so the only place where snow extent can increase is towards the south.

The implication of the observed trend towards increasing snow extent is that the Northern Hemisphere autumn/winter snow line is moving southwards over the last ten to twenty years.

Now maybe One Brow could explain how more snow at lower latitudes is consistent with Global Warming.

NY Times features KY "Teach the controversy" bill on human origins, global warming

For Immediate Release
March 4, 2010

LEXINGTON--A Kentucky bill that calls for critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion concerning the advantages and disadvantages of scientific theories was featured today in the New York Times. The bill, House Bill 397, was introduced by State Rep. Tim Moore (R-Elizabethtown).

"The Family Foundation is in full support of an open-minded approach to issues of human origins, global warming, and human cloning in our schools," said Martin Cothran, senior policy analyst with The Family Foundation of Kentucky. Cothran has also written for the Discovery Institute, which has worked for similar legislation in other states.

"Our students need to be learning how to think about all these issues," said Cothran, "they don't need to be indoctrinated with the current fads in science. Global Warming is just one issue in which some in the scientific community have decided which views are acceptable and which are not. We need to make sure our students are taught that there are others sides to some of these controversial issues."

The Bill, called the "Kentucky Science Education and Intellectual Freedom Act," allows a teacher to use materials other than state-approved textbooks, with the approval of the local site-based council, "to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review scientific theories in an objective manner, including but not limited to the study of evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning."

###

More coverage like this of the Global Warming debate couldn't hurt.

A very sober analysis from Newsweek of the Global Warming debate as it currently stands:

The battle between "alarmists" and "deniers" has taken a huge toll, not just on the reputations of Jones and the other "climategate" scientists. It has also damaged the credibility of climate science itself, and threatened more than a decade of diplomatic efforts to engineer a global reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions. The effort, which has kept a forward momentum since the Kyoto meeting in 1997, came to a cold stop in Copenhagen in December. The conference was originally intended to bring the U.S. and China into a global agreement, but produced nothing of substance. Indeed, the climate project bears a striking resemblance to health-care reform in the United States—stalled by a combination of political resistance and hubris.

What went wrong? Part of the blame lies, of course, with those who obstructed the efforts of the IPCC and the individual scientists, including bloggers who tried to sandbag scientists with spurious FOIA requests, and the perpetrators (as yet unknown) of the hack at the Climatic Research Unit. Part of the blame also falls on the climate scientists themselves. Many of them—including perhaps Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC head—may have stepped too far over the line from science to advocacy, undermining their own credibility. Some scientists, as a result, are now calling for a change in tone from antagonism to reconciliation. Climate science, they say, needs to open its books and be more tolerant of scrutiny from the outside. Its institutions—notably the IPCC—need to go about their business with greater transparency. "The circle-the-wagons mentality has backfired," says Judith Curry, head of Georgia Tech's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

Like most mainstream analyses of the issue, too much blame is placed on those who pointed out the problems, but otherwise it's the kind of reasonable treatment of the issue you see way too little of in the mainstream media.

Read the rest here.