I shall now put on my 'innocent' look and observe that we've seen frequent press releases in latter days trumpeting the issues of climate, all in the 'warm' direction. This is obviously in the way of journalism, there is news so let's report it.

Today we have a spectacular new paper which is the statistical equivalent of North Korea holeing a US carrier below the waterline, and I've been waiting for mention of it on the BBC web site (keeping a close eye on the 'Norfolk' pages) but nothing. Not a thing. I guess Richard Black and his colleagues [CL waves and says 'Hi' coz he knows RB et al read the Bish tho' they'd rather not admit it] feel that they have to wait until RC or other tame 'experts' tell them what the proper answer is before reporting it with all appropriate caveats, corrections, and corrigenda. Fair enough, one might think, so why is that not done with every other press release on climate? For example the one that Anthony Watts obtained a retraction for? There is either journalistic integrity, or there is following the line, you can't have it both ways.

If McShane and Wyner is not all over the environmental pages and featured in the 0810 spot of the Today program by the end of the week, in the same way as political, economic or sports news of the same magnitude would be, then it's very clear that the journalists need to admit that they are just placemen. If they have any knowledge, self respect, or integrity, then this would be big news.

...and yes, that is meant to be a direct challenge to them.

New Zealand temperature record now going before the High Court

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4026553/Court-challenge-to-Niwa-climate-records

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/15/coal-fired-power-stations-coalition

Coal-fired power stations win reprieve

Exclusive: Government's decision to put pollution standards 'on hold' raises possibility of dirtiest coal plants going ahead

cont.

Do we think someone in government has finally recognised the possibility of the UK ending up in the dark?

Lord beaver brook, a hard core sceptic badge? Sure, if you don't like any that I have done already ( see cartoonsbyjosh.com) then do email me with ideas or requirements.

You could try the monckton badge, that might frighten a few warmistas.

NIWA's climate data to be challenged in High Court

http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/stories/2010/08/15/4638eb302183

I put the reference to the McShane and Wyner paper in Unthreaded hoping that you will creat your own thread because I suspect that would attract a greater readership than Unthreaded.

Tks,

RayG

PS: On second read of HSI to better assimilate the details. Looking forward to the study on which you are now embarked.

Hello, all. Follow this link to a C/A post of a paper by McShane and Wyner that is a devastating critique of Mannian statistical and modeling.

climateaudit.org/2010/08/14/mcshane-and-wyner-2010/

From the Conclusions: "Climate scientists have greatly underestimated the uncertainty of proxybased reconstructions and hence have been overconfident in their models." and “Natural climate variability is not well understood and is probably quite large. It is not clear that the proxies currently used to predict temperature are even predictive of it at the scale of several decades let alone over many centuries” and, last, but not least, "Although we assume the reliability of their data for our purposes here, there still remains a considerable number of outstanding questions that can only be answered with a free and open inquiry and a great deal of replication.”

Not good news - Weather is now climate at the BBC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10919460

I thought they were getting over this?

I see from 'Watts up with That' that Ricahrd Black (BBC) has admitted to Anthony Watts that his (RB's0 report on the rice yields in Asia was an incorrect interpretation of the press release. There will apparently be a correction of the article.

Amazonian Drought response

According to Daniel Nepstad, also a co-author, “Our study further demonstrates that the response of forests to drought is complex. It is pre-mature to draw a big conclusion about the susceptibility of Amazon forests to drought from remote sensing data alone.”

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/07/28/0908741107.full.pdf

From the report:

Although we observed important oscillations in weather over
the Amazon from 1996–2005 (e.g., a 5.3-mm y−1 reduction in
PPT), these oscillations were not clearly related to EVI interannual
variability in densely forested areas at the Basin scale.
Thus, there is a need for additional analyses that couple field
measurements with satellite observations to clarify how the
Amazon region responds to drought, how those responses will be
expressed in the future under increasing drought conditions, and
to what extent those responses are captured in satellite observations
of canopy photosynthesis.

Did anyone inform the IPCC that the science just doesn't know yet? Perhaps Moonbat could pass on the information.