Global Warming “Science” Crumbles To Dust

With repeated “Climate-Gates” coming fast and furious and lots of science, data, political maneuvering, and just plain spin going on, we thought a nice concise summary was in order.  First the fundamental temperature data sets:

  • The British data (Hadley-CRU) maintained by the Climate Research Unit and the Hadley Center for Climate Change –  The Russian Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) discovered the supposed warming trend was created by slowly removing more and more Russian weather stations from the yearly global averages.
  • The National Climatic Data Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the U.S. – In the 1970s, NOAA collected the temperature data from 600 Canadian weather stations. But this number has dwindled over the years to just 35 today for the entire expanse of Canada, including just one above the Arctic Circle. (Canada currently operates 1,400 surface weather stations across the country, with more than 100 above the Arctic Circle). “NOAA… systematically eliminated 75% of the world’s stations with a clear bias towards removing higher latitude, high altitude and rural locations, all of which have a tendency to be cooler”
  • NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (NASA-GISS) – Mirrored NOAA in reducing the number of Canadian sites being averaged into the global data and cherry picking those that remained. NASA GISS is run by the “unbiased” James Hansen, who “became famous for calling coal [shipments] to your local power plant ‘death trains’ and advocating war-crime trials for the executives who daily force you to put gasoline in your car.”
  • U.S. weather satellites measuring global atmospheric temperatures – Data is too public to be manipulated or cherry-picked but has only been in operation since 1979.  Satellite data shows no increase in global temperature trends until the unrelated El Nino spike of 1998, with temperatures declining back down since then. By April of this year, that decline had completely offset the 1998 spike, with temperatures back to where they were in 1980.

The Nobel Prizing winning (with Al Gore) United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) often sited as the “gold standard” on Global Warming:

  •  2007 (Nobel Winning) IPCC Report determined a 90% probability that the massive Himalayan glaciers would melt away completely by 2035 – This was scientifically based on a single news report that sited a single Indian glaciologist in 1999. Syed Hasnain, the glaciologist in question, says he was misquoted and provided no date to the reporter. The United Nations never bothered to confirm the claim.
  • The head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, has received millions in grants to further study Himalayan glaciers, based on the original bogus 2035 melting claim. Email correspondence now proves that Pachauri was aware last fall that the 2035 melting claim was false, but he continued to try to hide that from the public through the December Copenhagen summit. After the full story became public, Pachauri and the IPCC finally admitted the falsehood.
  • 2007 IPCC Report claimed that global warming threatened up to 40% of the beloved Amazon rain forest, allegedly because it is extremely sensitive to even modest decreases in rainfall that supposedly may result from warming. (this was back when Global Warming was going to reduce not increase rain and snow) – This was scientifically based on a magazine article by two non-scientists, one being an environmental activist who has worked for the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace.
  • 2007 IPCC Report projected disappearing ice in the Andes, the European Alps, and Africa – This was scientifically based on a student dissertation and an article in a climbing magazine written by a hiker.
  • 2007 IPCC Report claimed that the world has “suffered rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s.”  – This was scientifically based on a unpublished study which, when published in 2008, concluded the opposite: “We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses.”
  • The U.N. dramatically claimed that 55 percent of the Netherlands is below sea level making it very susceptible to global flooding – the accurate portion is 26 percent.  Did the IPCC check any of it’s facts?

Professor Jones who was director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (Hadley-CRU) until emails leaked that he would destroy his data before turning it over for a Freedom of Information request.

  • Now claims the Data for vital ‘hockey stick graph’ that “proved” global warming has not been destroyed but is merely “lost” in his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’ – Since the data has been “missing” since October and Professor Jone’s professional reputation is currently stained with “scientific fraud”, one can only hope that a good office spring cleaning will clear all this mess up. (puns intended)
  • Now admits that in the last 15 years there had been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.
  • Now admits there had been two periods which experienced similar warming, from 1910 to 1940 and from 1975 to 1998, but said these could be explained by natural phenomena – that is they were not “man made”.
  • Now admits the world could have been even warmer during the medieval period than now – if true the world would be cooling despite man’s best attempts to create CO2.

Source Material:

Desktop CPUs Pentium 4s To Core i7s & AMD Too – Is It Time To Upgrade?

Tech Report has put together a 18 page round up of CPUs from yesterday and today.  The comparison is nice as it includes OLD hardware to give you a real feel for what kind of speed bump a new desktop would actually give in the real world.

The real gold however is in a single page: the value proposition:

With the data plotted [overall performance per dollar], we can see a few other contenders that might join the Athlon II X3 and X4 processors as value stand-outs at higher performance levels, including the Core i5-750, Phenom II X4 965, Core i7-920, and even the Core i7-960.  The ghosts of the P4 670 and the Core 2 Quad Q6600 haunt our value scatter plot, as well, reminding us of the dismal CPU values in days past…

The inclusion of total system prices alters the complexion of our scatter plot somewhat, too, mainly by making the LGA775 and LGA1366 processors look less attractive. The cheaper chips lose their luster, as well. The Core i5-750 and i7-870 remain nicely positioned, while the poorer values include the Core 2 Duo E8600, the Q9400, and the Core i5-661.

Tech Report even goes on to include the various electrical costs of the difference chip & system power draws which further extends the Intel lead and creates a clear cut winner.  Ok a few winners:

  • To build a reasonably beefy machine for around $700 and what the maximum bang for your buck – get the Core i5-750.
  • For more performance without breaking the bank ($1000-1200) pick up an entry level i7 – either the i7-920 or the i7-870 (the high end cores are much more expensive but only marginally faster)
  • For more efficient, always-on systems such as a HTPC consider the core i3-530 which will be easier on your electric bill and quieter than the i5

I personally invested in a i7-920 machine this summer (overclocked at 3.21Ghz with stock cooling) and love it.  I can encode a 90min movie from DVD insertion to finished file in ~16 minutes.  In fact, the two most significant performance improvements I have seen in a quite while in my own usage are my i7 core and my more recent SSD upgrade on my boot/programs drive.

New Atom Chips For Better Netbooks

Intel has officially unveiled their new Atom Processor, though netbooks with them won’t go on sale until January 4th.  Early benchmarks on the new 1.66 Ghz N450 chip put it at around 5% faster than current 1.6 Ghz N270 and about 1% faster than the less common 1.66 Ghz N280.  Intel has also “improved” their graphics by 50%.  Which sounds impressive until you realize that Nvidia’s Ion netbook GPUs are over 1000% more powerful than Intel’s current offering.

So if the performance improvements are marginal at best – why bother?  Simple: power. The new Atom chips are designed using a 45nm process and Intel’s new NM10 Express Chipset.  It also moves the memory controller on chip.  Which means the Atom N450 and chipset package has TDP of just 7 watts. Compare that to the 10 and 12 watt TDPs of current offerings.  Less power consumed means both longer battery life and thinner devices (since there is less heat to dissipate).  The netbooks launching after the New Year should be slightly thinner and 10 hour usage should be the norm for 6 cell batteries.

So if Santa doesn’t bring you that netbook you’ve been eyeing, I’d hold out a week. Unless you can score a killer clearance deal.  ;)

Congressman Conyers Can’t Understand The Bills He Votes On

What’s the point of laws that the law-makers themselves don’t understand? How can that possibily make the system better?

Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) speaks at a National Press Club luncheon. Speaking about health care reform legislation he said, “What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”