Magic Statistics

A slew of peer-reviewed articles and scholarly studies in recent months has blown alleged man-made climate change right out of the water.  The latest contrary evidence is in two papers showing that further build-up of carbon dioxide would have minimal impact on the planetary climate.

“Anthropogenic (man-made) global warming bites the dust,” declared astronomer Dr. Ian Wilson after reviewing the new study which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research.  Another scientist said the peer-reviewed study overturned “in one fell swoop” the climate fears promoted by the UN and former Vice President Al Gore. The study entitled “Heat Capacity, Time Constant, and Sensitivity of Earth’s Climate System,” was authored by Brookhaven National Lab scientist Stephen Schwartz. (LINK)

“Effectively, this (new study) means that the global economy will spend trillions of dollars trying to avoid a warming of ~ 1.0 K by 2100 A.D.” Dr. Wilson wrote in a note to the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee on August 19, 2007.  Wilson, a former operations astronomer at the Hubble Space Telescope Institute in Baltimore MD, was referring to the trillions of dollars that would be spent under such international global warming treaties like the Kyoto Protocol.

This new paper shows that a doubling of CO2 would increase temperatures by about 1.1 degrees, plus or minus 0.5 degrees.  Physicist Lubos Motl points out that about 0.7 degrees of that “has already occurred since the beginning of the industrial era”.

The other study, showing that increased atmospheric CO2 in the 20th and early 21st centuries has had minimal impact on weather and climate, is posted here. 

Other recent studies have shown:

1. Global warming over the past century is linked to natural causes.
2. CO2 is not a decisive factor in climate change.
3. Increased CO2 did not bring the last Ice Age to an end.
4. The southern hemisphere is cooling.
5. Temperatures changes drive changes in CO2 levels, not vice versa.
6. Fewer than half of published scientists endorse global warming theory.
7. Data misinterpretations led NASA to conclude, incorrectly, that 1998 was the hottest year in US history since record-keeping began.  Corrected data show that the hottest year was actually 1934.

Read the whole thing for links to these studies and many more.

h/t: Greenie Watch

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The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP) opposes increases in the royalties charged to energy companies operating in Alberta.  OTPP is jointly administered by the Government of Ontario and the Ontario Teachers’ Union Federation.

A group of investors, including the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, one of the country’s biggest pension funds, urged Alberta’s deputy premier and energy minister at a meeting on Friday to water down the royalty proposals. Shares of companies with interests in the Alberta energy sector have dropped markedly since the panel published its report.

That means Ontario teachers support the low-royalty regime now in place, which means that they back continued expansion of oil sands projects in northern Alberta, which means they favour more greenhouse gas emissions.

Teachers’ unions have been among the most aggressively politically correct organisations in Canada for years.  But when the incomes of retired members are jeopardised by the bread-and-butter issue, all that flies out the window.  Reality bites.

h/t: Alice the Camel

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A teacher in Bristol, England, who is discussing the Rolling Stones in her Grade 11 history course was foolish enough to ask Mick Jagger what he thinks of that.

In a BBC News website question-and-answer session, Alison McClean wrote: "I am currently teaching my Year 11 students about the impact of the Rolling Stones in preparation for their GCSE history coursework on Britain in the 1960s. How does Mick feel about being part of the history curriculum and, if he was sitting the exam himself, how would he describe the Stones' impact on Britain?"

Jagger, who passed O-level history at Dartford Grammar School in 1959, was less than impressed. "I suppose pop music was very important in the 1960s, it became perhaps too important. It was one of the things in popular culture," he said.

"Alison, I'm sure you're teaching it as part of the whole popular culture movement. I'm sure it's brilliantly accurate - or perhaps not because if you look up a lot of it, it's nonsense."

Got that right!  Sir Mick has better judgment than the aging boomers in charge of British educational standards.

h/t: Eye on Britain

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In my view, one of the most remarkable aspects of today’s Statistics Canada report, discussed in the previous post, is that this is the first StatCan publication in which I have come across a quote from the Bible.  Philip Cross of the Current Economic Analysis Group is the credited author.

This is the opening paragraph.

The 5-year surge of the Canadian dollar to parity with the US greenback has been driven by high commodity prices, among other factors. The revival of Canada’s resource sector immediately conjures the hoary image of Canadians as ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water’, with all its negative connotations going back to biblical times¹. This paper shows that this characterization of our resource sector is outdated, if it was ever true.

 Footnote 1 contains the quotation.

1. In the Bible, the Gibeonites who attempted to deceive Joshua were condemned “to be hewers of wood and drawers of water” to the congregation (Joshua ix, 21, 23). More generally, this was considered the work of menial servants.

I, for one, hope this marks the start of a new trend at Statistics Canada.  Let’s have more biblical references with our statistics.

Source:

Statistics Canada, 2007.  “The new underground economy of subsoil resources: no longer hewers of wood and drawers of water”.  Canadian Economic Observer, October 2007, feature article.  Statistics Canada catalogue no. 11-010-XWB. http://www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/11-010-XIB/11-010-XIB2007010.pdf (accessed 11 October 2007).

Previous related post: Canadians are hewers of wood and drawers of water no longer

An in-depth study published today by Statistics Canada challenges several myths about our primary sector.  As the headline suggests, Canada can no longer be considered a hewer of wood and drawer of water.  Energy and minerals have become the driving forces in the resource sector.

A number of structural and cyclical factors have reduced the importance of forestry products in Canada’s exports. Instead, since 2002 there has been a large shift in the resource sector away from trees and towards commodities found mostly underground, notably oil and metals. Rather than being ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water’, it is more accurate (if less catchy) to say Canadians are ‘conveyers of crude and moilers of metals’.

Less catchy?  I don’t know; I kinda like the sound of that.

This change in the resource sector reflects commodity prices that are currently in the midst of their longest and largest upswing on record. The increase started in 2003 in the energy sector, where prices doubled before leveling off in 2005. Then the boom became more pronounced for metals, where prices have tripled. By last year the upturn had spread to agricultural products, where a doubling for grain boosted farm prices by 50%.

Figure 1, at right, shows changes in commodity prices since 2001.  Metals prices have jumped higher and for a longer time than energy prices.  Two commodities are combined into energy prices: crude oil and natural gas.  Although crude oil prices have continued to increase since 2005, natural gas prices have plummeted due to lack of demand following the unexpectedly mild North American winter in 2006.

The study controverts two other myths about Canada’s resource sector.  The frequent claim that Canada exports "too much" of our primary resources without further processing is shown to be a gross oversimplification.  Also, the resource sector is no more prone to "boom-and-bust" business cycles than are other export industries.

See also this intriguing follow-up post: Statistics Canada quotes the Bible.

Sources:

Statistics Canada, 2007. " Study: The new underground economy of resources". The Daily, 11 October.  Statistics Canada catalogue no. 11-001-XIE. http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/061221/d061221d.htm (accessed 11 October 2007).

Statistics Canada, 2007.  “The new underground economy of subsoil resources: no longer hewers of wood and drawers of water”.  Canadian Economic Observer, October 2007, feature article.  Statistics Canada catalogue no. 11-010-XWB.  http://www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/11-010-XIB/11-010-XIB2007010.pdf (accessed 11 October 2007).

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