We see many articles like the following two that show more evidence of a solar control on climate even at the regional scale.

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A few years ago we identified what we termed the good for bad and bad for good paradigm of global warming impacts—that is, if some plant or animal species were generally regarded as being “good”—penguins, polar bears, butterflies, etc.—then global warming was supposed to do bad things to it. Conversely, if some type of plant or animal was generally viewed in a negative light—jellyfish, poison ivy, ragweed, etc.—then the publicized global warming impacts were, of course, positive.

Reporting anything to the contrary may have the unintended consequence of leading some people to think that global warming may not be so bad after all and may in fact have beneficial consequences. Which, of course, would violate rule No. 1 of the global warming alarmists’ playbook—human alteration to the global climate is B-A-D. Period.

Case and point, the Environmental Protection Agency in justifying its finding that greenhouse gases (GHGs) endanger the public health and welfare went to great pains to play up the negatives all the while downplaying the positive aspects of climate change. After all, you can’t very well justify regulating GHGs if they lead to benefits, now can you?

So, consequently, we rarely hear that something good comes about from climate change.

So, shiver me timbers, were we surprised to read this story from the wires:

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Imagine if the global annual average temperature were about 5°F colder than it is presently.

Not quite sure how to? OK, consider this: During the Little Ice Age—a period extending from about the 1500s to the mid-1800s and thought to be one of the coldest periods during the past 10,000 years or so—the earth’s average temperature may have been 2-3°F colder than present. Associated with the Little Ice Age are all sorts of human calamities—widespread crop failures, plagues, famines, population declines, glacial encroachments, etc. For a collection of descriptions of all the fun times that a colder climate brings, take a gander at the Wikipedia page on the Little Ice Age. After spending a few minutes there, you’ll see that these were not high times for humans.

Now, consider a temperature decline twice that much. That can’t be good.

Yet that’s apparently where we would be had human ingenuity not come along.

According to a new study just published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the global climate would be about 5°F colder than present were it not for human carbon dioxide and methane emissions.

Brrr.

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Commentary by Dr. Patrick J. Michaels

Isn’t it fitting that Earth Day, April 22, comes a mere week after the government rakes in all your money? That’s especially true this year, as Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is readying a bipartisan effort to pick your pocket with a new energy tax to fight dreaded global warming.

In the last year we have seen Climategate, Copenhagen, EPA’s finding that carbon dioxide endangers human health and welfare, and the improbably large number of errors and gaffs found in the latest report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Climategate clearly shows a pervasive attempt to paint, in the words of one of its tree ring experts, Keith Briffa, a “nice, tidy story” about global warming. In the same emails, Phil Jones, Briffa’s boss, wishes for global warming to resume so that he can be proven right. Some objectivity.

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Boy, it seems like it’s been a rough couple of years for New Hampshire, as far as natural wonders go.

First, back in 2003, the rocky outcropping that was known as Old Man of the Mountain—a natural wonder gracing both the state’s license plates, and state’s quarter, came crumbling down.

Now, another one of New Hampshire’s icons has fallen—that of the highest wind gust ever recorded on the surface of the earth. Back in the spring of 1934, at the observing post atop New Hampshire’s Mt. Washington—the tallest mountain in the Presidential Range and one of the most prominent peaks in the eastern U.S.—a howling 231 mph (372 km/hr) wind speed was recorded. That observation has long stood as the answer to the trivia question as to the “official” fastest wind speed ever recorded.

Now, the World Meteorological Organization has just announced that that the non-tornado surface wind speed record has been broken—actually, the WMO announced that the record was broken back in 1996, but it is just now officially recognizing the observation.

Back on April 10 1996, tropical cyclone Olivia passed near Barrow Island, Australia, where a wind gust of 253 mph (408 km/hr) was recorded. The WMO’s panel of “experts in charge of global weather and climate extremes within the WMO Commission for Climatology” has just finished a review of that observation and decided that it was indeed accurate, and thus knocking Mt. Washington’s 1934 observation from the top of the list.

But, New Hampshire can rest assured, because the general weather at Barrow Island, Australia is rather pleasant, and therefore Mt Washington’s claim to be the “Home of World’s Worst Weather” still seems be pretty safe.

[see update at bottom of post]

A new article has just been published in the January 22, 2010 issue of Science magazine which finds that there will be a large increase in the frequency of the strongest hurricanes in the Atlantic basin as the climate changes from increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. But a closer look at the results shows that this model-based result is produced by a hurricane model which under-simulates the frequency of strong storms in today’s climate. And that, despite the projected increase in intense hurricanes, the frequency of those storms projected by the model to occur by the end of the 21st century is considerably less than the frequency of intense hurricanes actually observed in the current climate. If the model doesn’t work for the present, why should we trust it for the future?

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On December 18th, the Washington Post ran an op-ed by Penn State’s Dr. Michael Mann—a central figure in the Climategate emails—arguing that the content of the released email “doesn’t alter evidence for climate change.”

But Dr. Mann is only coming at this from one side of the issue—that of the contents of the peer-reviewed literature. However, the Climategate emails contain ample evidence that the contents of the scientific literature were being influenced by an small group of researchers who sought to suppress ‘bad’ science—that is, science that they personally didn’t like. This is not the way things are supposed to work and has an unknown, but potentially large impact, which makes it virtually impossible to make valid assessments of the “evidence for climate change” based on the contents of the extant scientific literature.

An article posted at the new blog from the Science and Public Policy Institute discusses this situation in a bit more detail and includes a letter-to-the-editor that never made its way into print at the Washington Post that makes the point that contrary to Dr. Mann’s assertions, the Climategate emails reveal that it is not so much what is in the literature that is important, but what is not in the literature.

And this situation represents a true disservice to climate science at large.

The risk of impacts from climate change is rapidly growing—not from potential future changes in the weather, mind you, but instead, from potential massive government oversight in how we generate and consume energy. The governemnt is seriously considering rules that will impact the daily lives of each and every one of us—in the name of protecting the earth’s climate.

The past week has been quite a busy one on this front.

Here are some of the highlights (or lowlights) depending on whether you think that it is climate change or government intervention that needs mitigating:

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We are just back from the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change sponsored by the Heartland Institute, aka “the global warming skeptics” conference. There were about twice as many attendees at this year’s conference (the second annual) than at last year’s inaugural meeting—an indication, at the very least, that the skeptical view of global warming is not fading away.

In fact, the behavior of the earth’s climate in recent years (a slowdown in the rate of global warming and sea level rise) has emboldened climate skeptics and is helping to win over public opinion that much of what they hear about global warming and its ill effects are exaggerations of the most likely outcome. Andy Revkin of the New York Times writes about a just-released Gallup poll that shows that a growing number of Americans think that the “seriousness of global warming” is being “exaggerated” in the news. The Gallup’s findings are similar to other recent poll results that also show that global warming is not high on American’s list of concerns.

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By Patrick J. Michaels and Robert C. Balling, Jr.

We are happy to announce the publication of our book Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know which presents an in-depth look at consistent, solid science on the other side of the gloom-and-doom global warming story that is rarely reported and pushed aside: that global warming is likely to be modest, and there is no apocalypse on the horizon.

Those interested in a copy can purchase one over at the Cato Institute Bookstore.