The United Nations Climate Change Conference kicks of this week in Poznan, Poland, and in anticipation of this great event, we have examined three research papers published recently in top journals that give us insight into the climate history of Europe. Given the results of these papers, we doubt they will receive any press attention from the massive media delegation covering the climate conference.

First up is from a paper forthcoming in Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics by three scientists with the Atmospheric Physics Group in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in Italy's University of Trento; the project was funded by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund. The authors turn their attention to the northern European city of Verona, and they note a special opportunity there to reconstruct temperatures at a very high resolution going back 250 years. Andrighetti et al. note "after a careful search of both published and unpublished data from early observations, dispersed in various archives and libraries, under the guidance of historical information, data covering almost completely the period 1741 - 2006 were found, which provided the basis for the analysis presented in this paper." However, they state "After careful evaluation, measurements covering the period 1741-1768 appeared to be affected by too many discontinuities, gaps and possible ambiguities in the interpretation of data." They conducted many statistical tests on the remaining 1769-2006 data, and in the end, they were highly confident that the resulting time series was reasonably accurate.

The White House - Press Office - Remarks by the President at Arnold, Missouri Town Hall

Now, there is a long-term problem that we've got to deal with, and that's is a tough one. And that is this issue of climate change. I want to tell you the truth here because this is going to be a debate that we're going to be having over the course of the next year. The average person probably thinks, yes, climate change, that's kind of a drag, but it's not one of my top priorities -- because you don't really see it or feel it, it doesn't hit your pocketbook, it doesn't have to do with your job directly. And so the tendency is just to kind of push it off. People think, well, this just has to do with polar bears, and I feel bad about polar bears but I've got other things to worry about.

OUR understanding of the natural world does not progress through the straight forward accumulation of facts because most scientists tend to gravitate to the established popular consensus also known as the established paradigm. Thomas Kuhn describes the development of scientific paradigms as comprising three stages: prescience, normal science and revolutionary science when there is a crisis in the current consensus. When it comes to the science of climate change, we are probably already in the revolution state. In particular there is growing concern that some of the physics underpinning the IPCC climate models may be flawed. The work of Ferenc Miskolczi is a case in point.

Some years ago this Hungarian physicist, then working for NASA, discovered a flaw in an equation used in the current climate models. In order to progress this research Dr Miskolczi eventually resigned from NASA claiming his supervisors at NASA tried to suppress discussion and publication of his findings which have since been published in IDŐJÁRÁS, The Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Service.

In essence Dr Miskolczi showed that the solution to a differential equation for the greenhouse effect developed in 1922 by Arthur Milne, and central to the current paradigm, wrongly assumed an infinitely thick atmosphere. In re-solving this equation a new term and also a new law of physics have been proposed setting an upper limit to the greenhouse effect. Dr Miskolczi's theory indicates that any warming from elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide will eventually be offset by a change in atmospheric moisture content.

The idea that water vapour is a negative rather than positive feedback is consistent with the findings of other climate scientists undertaking independent research that is also challenging the current paradigm, for example the work of Dr Roy Spencer.

Arctic ice extent appears to have bottomed out in 2007, and has recovered the last two years as shown by this graph from the University of Illinois Cryosphere.

It has returned to very near the 1979-2000 year average (NSIDC). Had NSIDC used the entire period of record as their base period (1979-2008), we would be at or above the average.

Washington, DC - The New York Times has issued a "climate correction" for an "error" in its April 24, 2009 (posted online April 23) high profile front page global warming article that was touted by former Vice President Al Gore during his Congressional testimony as evidence that industry was clouding the science of climate change. [ See: Gore Mouthing-Off About Make-Believe Madoffs ]

But just little more than a week after publishing the front page article, the New York Times and reporter Andrew Revkin have now admitted the article "erred" on a key point. Revkin wrote about the now defunct Global Climate Coalition and documents that suggest the group had scientists on board in the 1990's who claimed "the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted." Revkin's article came under immediate fire from scientists and others who called into question the central claims and the accuracy of the story.

Our last post concerned the New York Times article by Andrew Revkin, about allegations of a 'tobacco strategy' conspiracy to distort the climate debate in the interests of energy companies.

The story was used by Al Gore in testimony to congress, in which he accuses the group of a fraud larger than that committed by Bernie Madoff, as Think Progress reports. They also upload a video and transcript of Gore's speech, which makes this post much easier to write.

For the first time, Japan has been hit with a large-scale collapse of honeybee populations like that experienced in other countries around the world.

"There have been small-scale honeybee losses for many years, but a massive collapse like they had in the U.S. is very unusual," said Kiyoshi Kimura of the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science. "We must investigate the situation in Japan."

The phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder, in which large numbers of worker bees simply vanish, was first identified in the United States in 2006. Since then, it has also been reported across Europe and, most recently, in Taiwan.

In Japan, the Japanese Beekeeping Association undertook a survey of its 2,500 members and determined that 25 percent of all beekeepers had "experienced sudden losses of honeybees" on some scale.

OK, so my art is a bit tongue in cheek. But it does fit the disaster theme of the topic.

This op-ed piece in the Herald Sun is interesting, because it touches on many of the points covered here on WUWT. This is the first time I've seen all these collected in one article in a major newspaper. Andrew Bolt routinely uses material from WUWT, and this is the first time I've been able to reciprocate. There are some truly unique points raised by Bolt that are indigenous to Australia that we haven't discussed here, but they are valid for discussion nonetheless. In cases where we have covered a point on WUWT, I've made a footnote link [in brackets] - Anthony

Despite dire predictions about the impact of climate change on Australia's iconic Great Barrier Reef, researchers have found that badly-damaged coral has managed to repair itself. Scientists say, although this is a heartening discovery, the threat of global warming to the world's largest coral system has not diminished.

Scientists have warned that the Great Barrier Reef - which stretches for more than 2,500 kilometers down Australia's northeast coast - is likely to bear the brunt of warmer ocean temperatures.

A major concern has been the bleaching of coral, where the sensitive marine organisms wither under environmental stress caused by increased water temperature, pollution or sedimentation.

Scientists have long searched for linkages between solar variability and weather. The sun varies on a wide-range of time scales, most dramatically on an ~11 year cycle which is strongly associated with the number and extent of sunspots on the sun and the occurrence of aurora at high latitudes. While correlations of weather and solar variability have been reported, often-times to disappear when further measurements become available, no viable mechanism for the strongest associations has been confirmed. One difficulty is that the variable solar energy, despite sunspots and aurora being spectacular, is but a small fraction of 1% of the total solar energy. Any mechanism for changing weather and climate by solar variability must involve influencing the distribution of the energy within the weather system. One possible mechanism is via the Earth's geoelectric field.