Per Pew Poll, 600,000 US Muslim residents say suicide bombing is justified in some cases. 70% of US Muslims identify as Democrat, 11% as Republican

By Pew's most conservative estimates there are 3 million US Muslims as of 2014 (p. 2). That number increases by 80,000 to 90,000 each year as new Muslim immigrants move to the US. By 2020, 109,000 new Muslims will move to the US yearly. Most of them will be from Pakistan and Bangladesh. (Expanded citations at end of this post).

A 2011 Pew Poll (below) surveys US Muslim attitudes and finds up to 19% of US Muslims think suicide bombing is justified. By 2014 population estimates, this means approximately 600,000 US Muslims believe suicide bombing is justified at least in some cases (19% of 3 million). Pew below headlines these findings, "Overwhelming Majority Say Suicide Bombing Never Justified,"

Pew describes the number approving suicide bombing as "negligible" because it showed "no signs of growth" from previous years, or because 19% isn't an "overwhelming majority": Subhead below, "Support for Extremism Remains Negligible."

The second Pew Poll below also presented as good news is titled, "Islamic Extremism, Widespread Concern, Minimal Support." One poll question finds 8% of US Muslims believe suicide bombing is justified "often or sometimes." 8% of 3 million US Muslims in 2014 is 240,000.  Pew calls this "minimal" support.

2011 Pew Poll on US Muslim attitudes:

8/30/11, "Muslim Americans: No Signs of Growth in Alienation or Support for Extremism," Pew Poll, people-press.org

"Support for Extremism Remains Negligible"

















































Per poll below, 70% of US Muslims identify as Democrat, only 11% as Republican:

"Number of Muslims in the U.S."

p. 2, scroll down: "Based on data from the survey, in combination with U.S. Census data, Pew Research Center demographers estimate that there are about 1.8 million Muslim adults and 2.75 million Muslims of all ages (including children under 18) living in the United States in 2011. This represents an increase of roughly 300,000 adults and 100,000 Muslim children since 2007, when Pew Research demographers used similar methods to calculate that there were about 1.5 million Muslim adults (and 2.35 million Muslims of all ages) in the U.S.

The increase is in line with what one would expect from net immigration and natural population growth (births minus deaths) over the past four years. The 2011 population estimate also roughly accords with separate projections made last year by the Pew Forum’s “The Future of the Global Muslim Population.” For that report, demographers at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria independently estimated the total U.S. Muslim population at about 2.6 million in 2010. The same report also estimated that about 80,000 to 90,000 new Muslim immigrants have been entering the United States annually in recent years.

How the estimate was made

Prior to Pew Research Center’s 2007 survey, no estimate for the Muslim American population, based on widely accepted social scientific methods, was available. Gauging the number of Muslims living in the United States is difficult because the U.S. Census Bureau, as a matter of policy, does not ask Americans about their religion. Nor do U.S. immigration authorities keep track of the religious affiliation of new immigrants. Both the Census Bureau and immigration authorities do collect statistics, however, on people’s country of birth. Researchers can estimate the size of U.S. religious groups by combining this country-of-birth information with data from surveys on the percentage of people from each country, or group of countries, who belong to various faiths.

For example, interviewing used to identify Muslim respondents for the Pew Research Center’s 2011 Muslim American survey (which screened more than 43,000 households, including non-Muslims) finds that 87% of people living in the U.S. who were born in Pakistan, Bangladesh or Yemen are Muslim.

Pew Research demographers applied this percentage to country-of-birth figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. The census data show there are 198,000 households in which the head or spouse is from one of these three countries, which when multiplied by the percentage of Muslims from these countries (87%) results in an estimate that there are 173,000 immigrant Muslim households of Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Yemeni extraction.

The survey also asked about other Muslim adults and children in the household. On the basis of this information, an average household size was calculated for each country-of-birth group (or parent’s country-of-birth group) and multiplied by the number of households. The 173,000 Muslim immigrant households from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Yemen, for example, contain an estimated 380,000 Muslim adults and 195,000 Muslim children, for a combined total of 576,000 Muslims in these households. A similar approach was taken for second-generation immigrant households, which were calculated separately. For households with no foreign-born respondents or natives with foreign-born parents (i.e., third-generation households), calculations were made using survey data on age and racial breakdowns of third-generation (or later) Muslim Americans, again applied to U.S. Census data on the third-and-higher generations."...

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Jan. 2011 Pew Research cites US immigration policy for increasing US Muslim population:

1/27/2011, “The Future of the Global Muslim Population,” Pew Research

(p. 1, parag. 6): "In the United States, for example, the population projections show the number of Muslims more than doubling over the next two decades, rising from 2.6 million in 2010 to 6.2 million in 2030, in large part because of immigration and higher-than-average fertility among Muslims.... (See the Americas section for more details.)"...

Citation for 80,000-90,000 new Muslim immigrants yearly in US:

p. 10, subhead, "Muslim Immigration to the United States"

"Projections start with Muslims making up 9.4% of a total of 938,000 new permanent residents per year, or an estimated 88,000 people in 2010. By 2020, Muslims are projected to comprise 10.5% of more than 1 million new permanent U.S. residents per year, or about 109,000 people annually....

The top countries of origin for Muslim immigrants to the United States in 2009 were Pakistan and Bangladesh. They also are expected to be the top countries of origin for Muslim immigrants in 2030."...

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My computations: 2014 US Muslim population estimates computed as follows:

2011 Pew estimate 2,750,000

Increase of 80,000 per year x 3 years= 240,000

2014 est. US Muslims: 2,990,000. Round to 3 million in 2014

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Genocide, The Elephant in the Room:

According to accepted definitions, US politicians are committing genocide against America via immigration policy. If one needed proof, Pew Research in Jan. and August 2011 provides it.

"What is Genocide?"

"The crime of genocide is defined in international law in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide."...

"Lemkin defined genocide as follows:

"Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.""
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Comment: We look forward to a Pew Poll asking US Muslim views on beheading. 

Is it always OK or just sometimes OK?






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Since US no longer needs Qatar's natural gas, Qatar has lost political influence. To rebuild its global clout and ability to back Hamas, Islamic militias, and the Muslim Brotherhood, Qatar seeks to finance a Texas natural gas terminal, export large share of US natural gas and resell it-NY Times

9/29/14, "A U-Turn for a Terminal Built in Texas to Import Natural Gas," NY Times, Clifford Krauss, Sabine Pass, Texas

"The giant Golden Pass natural gas import terminal here, meant to bring Middle Eastern gas to energy-hungry Americans, sits eerily quiet these days, a sleepy museum to a bygone era.

Its 5,000 valves, 50 million pounds of steel and ship berth as big as 77 football fields — representing a $2 billion investment by Qatar Petroleum, Exxon Mobil and Conoco Phillips — have been dormant for nearly three years. The unexpected American shale fracking frenzy produced such a glut of domestic gas that

the United States does not need Qatari gas anymore.

But the Golden Pass story is only beginning.

Qatar Petroleum, the state oil company, is now requesting permission to export American gas, proposing with its partner Exxon Mobil an audacious conversion of the facility to export from import. The additional estimated cost: $10 billion, if not more.

Conoco Phillips has bowed out of the export project, deciding not to double down. For Qatar Petroleum and Exxon Mobil, the retooled plan represents a grand improvisation and a plan to export a sizable share of the new American bonanza.

“Do we hope to make money out of it that we are not making today? Absolutely,” said Robert S. Franklin, president of the Exxon Mobil Gas and Power Marketing Company. “There is very significant upside in this project.”

The two companies propose to reverse some pipelines, using the existing gas storage tanks and docks and adding three enormous refrigerant plants to the complex on land now occupied by cattle grazing under a blazing sun. The plants will take American gas and cool it to minus 260 Fahrenheit, condensing it to a liquid that can be loaded on tankers and shipped to Asian, Latin American and European markets.

Golden Pass is one of eight potential liquefied natural gas projects Exxon is considering, including projects in Canada, Australia and Tanzania. As the biggest gas producer in the United States, Exxon could profit handsomely from the terminal, which could export two billion cubic feet of gas a day, nearly 3 percent of current production in the United States.

The proposed conversion offers many bonuses for Qatar, which plans to put up 70 percent of the money for the export project. It is a way to salvage a failed project from an embarrassment and convert it to a jewel among its gas investments, which already stretch from the Persian Gulf to the Adriatic Sea to South Wales. The project could enable the Persian Gulf emirate to capitalize on the United States energy revolution in time 

to help finance the hosting of the 2022 World Cup and other giant construction projects.

Most important, Golden Pass could help Qatar remain a dominant player in the growing and fast-changing global natural gas market. Qatar leverages its immense gas wealth to exert political influence in the Middle East and North Africa, backing directly and indirectly Hamas in Gaza, Islamic militias in Syria and Libya, and allies of the Muslim Brotherhood across the region, even while granting the United States space for a military base on Iran’s doorstep.

“The Qataris have a clear view that their resource is both commercial and geopolitical,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy and Middle East specialist at the University of California, Davis. “They want to sell their gas to important places, and they want to be important to the United States.”

Qatar is a slowly declining energy power, in part because the United States no longer needs its gas. In a few years, other countries, particularly Australia, will replace Qatar as the global swing producer that will determine where supplies go and at what price; the sale fees of gas are set regionally and not globally as they are with oil.

But large Asian and European buyers are increasingly bargaining to buy gas at prices that approach the low American gas price, frequently on the spot market. That is far below Qatar’s preferred price, which is indexed to higher global oil prices. As more American gas comes on the world market, Qatar could become increasingly squeezed, energy specialists say.

Qatar still has abundant pricing power. Its own export plants, which it runs in partnership with Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Total of France and other international oil companies, produce a third of the 230 million tons of annual global liquefied natural gas output.

But the export terminals being built around the world will provide markets with an additional 80 million tons of annual capacity — and none of it is being built in Qatar. Australia will replace Qatar as the largest global gas exporter by 2017,

according to a report this year by Eurasia Group, the New York-based geopolitical consultancy, and combined United States and Canadian capacity could also surpass Qatar’s by 2020.

“If they want to retain market share, Qatar is definitely going to need more gas,” said Leslie Palti-Guzman, senior analyst for global energy and natural resources at Eurasia Group.

Qatar may need more gas, but producing more at home is a politically charged proposition. The country has a moratorium on gas production from its main offshore field, which it shares with Iran. A main reason, regional energy specialists say, is to avert angry charges and potential retaliation from Tehran for draining the shared field.

The Golden Pass terminal would give the Qataris more gas to sell without breaking their drilling moratorium at home. The Texas facility would also give them an opportunity to sell American gas at the low American price to mostly Asian traders who have the purchasing leverage to demand it. In doing so, Qatar can try to preserve the higher oil-indexed price for the gas it produces at home.

“For Qatar to adapt, they not only need to adapt their marketing strategy in terms of where to sell the gas but also in terms of their pricing strategy to retain market share,” Ms. Palti-Guzman said. “Golden Pass fits into that.”

Requests to speak with Qatari government and oil industry officials went unanswered. Exxon Mobil’s Mr. Franklin said he could not speak for them, but offered praise. “They have been as good as anyone we’ve dealt with from a business-friendly perspective,” he said of Exxon Mobil’s Qatari partners.

The Golden Pass project remains at least five years from fruition, and Exxon Mobil executives have expressed frustration at the slow pace of Obama administration approvals of proposed export terminals.

“Why don’t we have a permit?” Mr. Franklin complained. “I have no idea.”

The terminal’s prospects appeared to many specialists to have improved when the Energy Department issued a rule in May pushing platforms with strong financial backing, which includes Golden Pass, to the head of the regulatory line of approval.

More than 20 projects are under consideration by the Energy Department and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which reviews their environmental impact. The Energy Department gave final approval to two proposed export projects this month, enabling them to ship gas to countries without free-trade agreements with the United States. They join Cheniere Energy’s terminal a few miles from Golden Pass across the Louisiana border, which was the first terminal to gain full federal regulatory approval and is expected to begin exporting by late 2015.

Still, the Golden Pass project remains a somnolent hub of high technology and giant structures perched incongruously in alligator-infested swampland. The terminal bears few signs of Qatar, aside from a set of clocks displaying both Qatari and Texas time down the hall from pictures of Qatari tankers that had docked here years ago before the terminal went quiet."

"A version of this article appears in print on September 30, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition."...




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Antarctic Sea Ice Extent, Sept. 27, 2014

9/27/14, Antarctic Sea Ice Extent, NSIDC, "Area of ocean with at least 15% sea ice," "Daily Sea Ice Extent Time Series," NSIDC.org/data/seaice_index/. Click Daily tab




















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http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/

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September average Antarctic Sea Ice extent, millions of square km since 1979 (satellite era)

1979-2000 mean 18.7

2013-2014 19.8

earthobservatory.nasa.gov




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Secretly taped conversations between Goldman Sachs and Federal Reserve. The Fed operates by 'consensus' so no individual can ever be held accountable for financial crises. US gov. regulators are controlled by banks-Bloomberg View, Michael Lewis

9/27/14, "Update: Congressional Reaction, Goldman Changes Conflicts Policy," Pro Publica
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9/26/14, "The Secret Goldman Sachs Tapes," Bloomberg View, Michael Lewis

"Probably most people would agree that the people paid by the U.S. government to regulate Wall Street have had their difficulties. Most people would probably also agree on two reasons those difficulties seem only to be growing: an ever-more complex financial system that regulators must have explained to them by the financiers who create it, and the ever-more common practice among regulators of leaving their government jobs for much higher paying jobs at the very banks they were once meant to regulate. Wall Street's regulators are people who are paid by Wall Street to accept Wall Street's explanations of itself, and who have little ability to defend themselves from those explanations.

Our financial regulatory system is obviously dysfunctional. But because the subject is so tedious, and the details so complicated, the public doesn't pay it much attention.

That may very well change today, for today -- Friday, Sept. 26 --- the radio program "This American Life" will air a jaw-dropping story about Wall Street regulation, and the public will have no trouble at all understanding it.

The reporter, Jake Bernstein, has obtained 46 hours of tape recordings, made secretly by a Federal Reserve employee, of conversations within the Fed, and between the Fed and Goldman Sachs. The Ray Rice video for the financial sector has arrived.

First, a bit of background -- which you might get equally well from today's broadcast as well as from this article by ProPublica. After the 2008 financial crisis, the New York Fed, now the chief U.S. bank regulator, commissioned a study of itself. This study, which the Fed also intended to keep to itself, set out to understand why the Fed hadn't spotted the insane and destructive behavior inside the big banks, and stopped it before it got out of control. The "discussion draft" of the Fed's internal study, led by a Columbia Business School professor and former banker named David Beim, was sent to the Fed on Aug. 18, 2009. 

It's an extraordinary document. There is not space here to do it justice, but the gist is this: The Fed failed to regulate the banks because it did not encourage its employees to ask questions, to speak their minds or to point out problems.

Just the opposite: The Fed encourages its employees to keep their heads down, to obey their managers and to appease the banks. That is, bank regulators failed to do their jobs properly not because they lacked the tools but because they were discouraged from using them.

The report quotes Fed employees saying things like, "until I know what my boss thinks I don't want to tell you," and "no one feels individually accountable for financial crisis mistakes because management is through consensus." Beim was himself surprised that what he thought was going to be an investigation of financial failure was actually a story of cultural failure. 

Any Fed manager who read the Beim report, and who wanted to fix his institution, or merely cover his ass, would instantly have set out to hire strong-willed, independent-minded people who were willing to speak their minds, and set them loose on our financial sector. The Fed does not appear to have done this, at least not intentionally. But in late 2011, as those managers staffed up to take on the greater bank regulatory role given to them by the Dodd-Frank legislation, they hired a bunch of new people and one of them was a strong-willed, independent-minded woman named Carmen Segarra. 

I've never met Segarra, but she comes across on the broadcast as a likable combination of good-humored and principled. "This American Life" also interviewed people who had worked with her, before she arrived at the Fed, who describe her as smart and occasionally blunt, but never unprofessional. She is obviously bright and inquisitive: speaks four languages, holds degrees from Harvard, Cornell and Columbia. She is also obviously knowledgeable: Before going to work at the Fed, she worked directly, and successfully, for the legal and compliance departments of big banks. 

She went to work for the Fed after the financial crisis, she says, only because she thought she had the ability to help the Fed to fix the system. 

In early 2012, Segarra was assigned to regulate Goldman Sachs, and so was installed inside Goldman. (The people who regulate banks for the Fed are physically stationed inside the banks.)

The job right from the start seems to have been different from what she had imagined: In meetings, Fed employees would defer to the Goldman people; if one of the Goldman people said something revealing or even alarming, the other Fed employees in the meeting would either ignore or downplay it. For instance, in one meeting a Goldman employee expressed the view that "once clients are wealthy enough certain consumer laws don't apply to them." After that meeting, Segarra turned to a fellow Fed regulator and said how surprised she was by that statement -- to which the regulator replied, "You didn't hear that." 

This sort of thing occurred often enough -- Fed regulators denying what had been said in meetings, Fed managers asking her to alter minutes of meetings after the fact-- that Segarra decided she needed to record what actually had been said. So she went to the Spy Store and bought a tiny tape recorder, then

began to record her meetings at Goldman Sachs, 

until she was fired.

(How Segarra got herself fired by the Fed is interesting. In 2012, Goldman was rebuked by a Delaware judge for its behavior during a corporate acquisition. Goldman had advised one energy company, El Paso Corp., as it sold itself to another energy company, Kinder Morgan, in which Goldman actually owned a $4 billion stake, and a Goldman banker had a big personal investment. 

The incident forced the Fed to ask Goldman to see its conflict of interest policy. It turned out that Goldman had no conflict of interest policy -- but when Segarra insisted on saying as much in her report, her bosses tried to get her to change her report. Under pressure, she finally agreed to change the language in her report, but she couldn't resist telling her boss that she wouldn't be changing her mind. Shortly after that encounter, she was fired.) 

I don't want to spoil the revelations of "This American Life": It's far better to hear the actual sounds on the radio, as so much of the meaning of the piece is in the tones of the voices -- and, especially, in the breathtaking wussiness of the people at the Fed charged with regulating Goldman Sachs. But once you have listened to it -- as when you were faced with the newly unignorable truth of what actually happened to that NFL running back's fiancee in that elevator -- consider the following: 

1. You sort of knew that the regulators were more or less controlled by the banks. Now you know.
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2. The only reason you know is that one woman, Carmen Segarra, has been brave enough to fight the system. She has paid a great price to inform us all of the obvious. She has lost her job, undermined her career, and will no doubt also endure a lifetime of lawsuits and slander.

So what are you going to do about it? At this moment the Fed is probably telling itself that, like the financial crisis, this, too, will blow over. It shouldn't." via DemocratsAgainstUNAgenda21, "The Economic Collapse: Fed Regulators Purposely Failed"

THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE: FED REGULATORS PURPOSELY FAILED

- See more at: http://www.democratsagainstunagenda21.com/the-way-we-see-itour-blog/the-economic-collapse-fed-regulators-purposely-failed#sthash.rXzJQIQ4.dpuf

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9/26/14, "536: The Secret Recordings of Carmen Segarra," thisAmericanLife.org, Chicago Public Media

"Act One: ProPublica's Jake Bernstein tells the story of Carmen's first months at the New York Fed, and how she came to start recording. And we hear the story of how the Fed examiners respond to an unusual, questionable deal that Goldman Sachs did — a deal that the top Fed guy stationed inside Goldman calls "legal but shady." 
Act Two: In the course of reporting our story with ProPublica, we sent lots of questions to the New York Fed and Goldman Sachs. We wanted to share those with you, along with the institutions' responses. 

Our questions to the New York Fed are here. 

The New York Fed responded with a statement and later this email.

Our questions to Goldman Sachs are here. 

Goldman Sachs' response is here. 

And one last document that plays an important role in our story: the confidential report Columbia professor David Beim wrote for the New York Fed in 2009, as it was trying to figure out why it failed to anticipate the financial crisis and what it should do to make sure it wouldn't fail to catch the next one. 

Here is a transcript of the full episode." 

Image: Carmen Segarra, This American Life

California Judge rules against Green Billionaire Vinod Khosla, says he must allow public access to a road on his property that leads to the beach. Rich Green Khosla had blocked public access to the road. He can appeal to his cronies in state government-AP. UPDATE: Gov. Brown gives Khosla 1 year to negotiate

10/1/14, "California Governor Signs Law to Force Billionaire to Restore Beach Access," nbc news

Gov. Brown says Land Commission should negotiate with Khosla for a year.
-------------------------------------------- 
9/25/14, "Judge rules against billionaire in Martin’s Beach dispute," AP via San Francisco Examiner

"A Northern California judge ruled Wednesday against a Silicon Valley billionaire who had shut down public access to a beach beloved by surfers and swimmers, ordering him to reopen his private road to the beach.

San Mateo County Superior Court Judge Barbara Mallach ruled that venture capitalist Vinod Khosla would have to obtain permission from the California Coastal Commission if he wished to close off Martin's Beach, a secluded stretch of coast south of Half Moon Bay.

The case, brought by the surfer and environmental group Surfrider Foundation, had been seen as a test of 1970s laws ensuring public access to the state's 1,100 miles of coast. It also tweaked feelings of resentment at the privileged life enjoyed by the Bay Area's growing cadres of tech and investment magnates.

Mallach's finding "is an affirmation that the promise of public access to the citizens of California is not an empty promise. It's something that has real power and authority," said Eric Buescher, one of the attorneys for the surfer association.

"There were lots of other wealthy landowners up and down the coast who were watching very closely, and hoping Mr. Khosla's argument was well-received," Buescher said. Wednesday's ruling "won't just impact this one beach. It will impact the whole coastline."

An attorney for Khosla did not immediately return a call for comment.

For more than a century, owners of the beachfront property had allowed beach-goers to use a private road to reach Martin's Beach, in exchange for parking fees.

When Khosla bought the 89-acre beachfront property in 2008, his employees locked the gate on the road and occasionally posted security guards at the gate. They also painted over a billboard advertising the beach.

Attorneys for the businessman argued the property was exempt from coastal access laws because the land had been in private hands since before California became a state.

The closing of Martin's Beach had so angered state lawmakers that they approved a measure authorizing the state to negotiate to buy the private beach road, if necessary. The measure is now before Gov. Jerry Brown for his signing or rejection. Bill author Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, initially had sought legislation authorizing eminent domain to seize the road for public use." via Free Rep.




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PNAS study of 100 years of west coast climate finds no evidence that human emissions caused changes. Winds determine virtually all ocean warming. 'This is taking people by surprise, and may generate some blowback,' says scientist co-author. Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown at UN climate summit denies the science-Seattle Times, LA Times

"On Sunday, signing several laws aimed at reducing (human caused) climate change, (Gov.) Brown said that "we know in California that carbon pollution kills."...

9/22/14, "Study says natural factors, not humans, behind West Coast warming," Seattle Times, Craig Welch

"The rise in temperatures along the West Coast over the past century [of between .5 to 1C] is almost entirely due to natural forces — not human emissions of greenhouse gases, according to a major new study...."

"It has been a subject of debate for years: How much has global warming contributed to a documented rise in temperatures along the West Coast?

A new study published Monday in a major research journal suggests the answer thus far, particularly in the Northwest, is: hardly any.

An average coastal temperature increase of 1 degree Celsius since 1900 along the West Coast appears more likely to be the result of changes in winds and air circulation over the eastern Pacific Ocean, two former University of Washington scientists found.

And the researchers said they could find no evidence that those weather patterns were being influenced by human greenhouse-gas emissions.

“It’s a simple story, but the results are very surprising: We do not see a human hand in the warming of the West Coast,” said co-author Nate Mantua, now with NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center. “That is taking people by surprise, and may generate some blowback.”

Climate scientists for years have acknowledged that Pacific Northwest weather can vary naturally year to year — or even decade to decade. But many have argued that human burning of fossil fuels is already a huge factor driving up regional temperatures.

But the new research by Mantua and lead author Jim Johnstone, formerly with the UW’s Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Oceans, suggests that natural variation in weather accounts for the vast majority of regional temperature increases for the last 113 years.

The study found wind responsible for more than 80 percent of the warming from Northern California to the Northwest.

In Southern California, winds accounted for about 60 percent.

“It was a big eye-opener,” Johnstone said. “The winds have changed in a manner that explains virtually all of the coastal ocean warming. The winds appear to decide it all.”

Both authors were quick to point out that their study does not in any way refute that temperatures globally are on the rise or that humans are responsible for that trend. The Northwest just happens to be a region where wind and weather swing far more wildly than, say, the tropics, drowning out any climate signal.

“This doesn’t say that global warming is not happening,” Mantua said. “It doesn’t say human-caused climate change isn’t happening globally. It’s a regional story.”

Nor does it suggest that greenhouse gases won’t be a significant regional factor in the future.

But it does raise questions about how well global climate models can be used to predict the near-term for specific regions.

“There’s been so much pressure to get local and regional climate information, because that’s where people live and plan and experience the climate,” Mantua said. “But this raises some questions about whether the models are capturing the connection between human-caused changes and natural variability well enough to interpret these local and regional records.”

Said Johnstone: “There are projections, based on carbon-dioxide emissions, that predict substantial warming here for the next few decades. Having looked at the way the temperatures actually behave, I’d be hesitant to say if that’s the case. I don’t know whether it will warm or cool or stay flat.”

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, raised eyebrows among several scientists.

“That sort of flies in the face of many, many years of research and modeling,” said John Abatzoglou, a climatologist at the University of Idaho, who co-authored a study earlier this year that deemed human issues a leading cause of temperature rise in the Northwest. “That leads me to question whether or not the results are robust.”

Others called the paper “significant” and said Johnstone and Mantua highlighted the thorny work of trying to tease apart the details that are driving global change.

“We can’t just assume that if it’s warming it must be climate change,” said UW atmospheric scientist John M. Wallace.

Mantua agreed: “The climate system isn’t that simple. History has been playing tricks on us.” In fact, the road to their conclusions started in the fog.

A few years ago, Johnstone was trying to understand why fog in Northern California had declined so precipitously. He determined it was linked closely to sea and air temperatures and regional air-circulation patterns, which he tracked back to the early 1900s.

But then he had another question: How closely tied were temperatures with these regional winds?

”I didn’t have to dig hard for the answer at all,” Johnstone said. “It just seemed to present itself.”

He found that temperature dating back to 1900 was very consistently linked to coastal winds. But Johnstone and Mantua could find no link suggesting that climate change had altered those winds.

Guillaume Mauger, a UW climate scientist, said he had a few questions about the details of the study but didn’t dispute the findings.

“As these things go, it’s likely to get watered down the more people look into it, but it looks like they’ve done their homework well,” he said.

Abatzoglou, however, was skeptical about the quality of the early 20th-century data the study’s authors relied upon to reach their conclusions.

“The principles they are putting forth in the paper I agree with, but as you go back further and further in time you start to increase the amount of error inherent in the data,” he said.

But he and Amy Snover, head of UW’s Climate Impacts Group, said the larger point is that the study doesn’t change the long-term trend. 

“I think what it does show is that there are aspects of regional climate that these models could do better at,” Snover said. “But we know we’re in for a bumpy ride. We know that the influence of humans on climate is only growing over time. We expect over coming decades for that influence to get bigger and bigger.”

On that, the study’s authors agreed.

“Global warming is still proceeding,” Mantua said. “And it’s still a really huge deal that’s going to shape the future and be a bigger and bigger part of our story.”"

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PNAS study accepted by Editorial Board 8/19/14:

"Atmospheric controls on northeast Pacific temperature variability and change, 1900–2012," James A. Johnstone and Nathan J. Mantua

"Significance"

"Northeast Pacific coastal warming since 1900 is often ascribed to anthropogenic greenhouse forcing, whereas multidecadal temperature changes are widely interpreted in the framework of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), which responds to regional atmospheric dynamics. This study uses several independent data sources to demonstrate that century-long warming around the northeast Pacific margins, like multidecadal variability, can be primarily attributed to changes in atmospheric circulation. It presents a significant reinterpretation of the region’s recent climate change origins, showing that atmospheric conditions have changed substantially over the last century, that these changes are not likely related to historical anthropogenic and natural radiative forcing, and that dynamical mechanisms of interannual and multidecadal temperature variability can also apply to observed century-long trends."

 

"Abstract" 

"Over the last century, northeast Pacific coastal sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and land-based surface air temperatures (SATs) display multidecadal variations associated with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, in addition to a warming trend of ∼0.5–1 °C. Using independent records of sea-level pressure (SLP), SST, and SAT, this study investigates northeast (NE) Pacific coupled atmosphere–ocean variability from 1900 to 2012, with emphasis on the coastal areas around North America. We use a linear stochastic time series model to show that the SST evolution around the NE Pacific coast can be explained by a combination of regional atmospheric forcing and ocean persistence, accounting for 63% of nonseasonal monthly SST variance (r = 0.79) and 73% of variance in annual means (r = 0.86). We show that SLP reductions and related atmospheric forcing led to century-long warming around the NE Pacific margins, with the strongest trends observed from 1910–1920 to 1940. NE Pacific circulation changes are estimated to account for more than 80% of the 1900–2012 linear warming in coastal NE Pacific SST and US Pacific northwest (Washington, Oregon, and northern California) SAT. An ensemble of climate model simulations run under the same historical radiative forcings fails to reproduce the observed regional circulation trends. These results suggest that natural internally generated changes in atmospheric circulation were the primary cause of coastal NE Pacific warming from 1900 to 2012 and demonstrate more generally that regional mechanisms of interannual and multidecadal temperature variability can also extend to century time scales."

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/09/16/1318371111.abstract

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"Most of the warming in the region occurred before 1940, when greenhouse gas concentrations were lower and winds were weaker, the study found."...

9/22/14, "West Coast warming linked to naturally occurring changes," LA Times, Tony Barboza

"Naturally occurring changes in winds, not human-caused climate change, are responsible for most of the warming on land and in the sea along the West Coast of North America over the last century, a study has found.

The analysis challenges assumptions that the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has been a significant driver of the increase in temperatures observed over many decades in the ocean and along the coastline from Alaska to California.

Changes in ocean circulation as a result of weaker winds were the main cause of about 1 degree Fahrenheit (about .55C) of warming in the northeast Pacific Ocean and nearby coastal land between 1900 and 2012, according to the analysis of ocean and air temperatures over that time. The study, conducted by researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Washington, was published Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

Natural, wind-driven climate patterns in the Pacific Ocean, such as El Niño and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, are already known to exert a powerful influence on sea and land temperatures over years and even decades.

This latest research shows that similar changes in atmospheric and ocean circulation  

can drive trends that last a century or longer, overshadowing the effects of human-generated increase in greenhouse gases, the

study's authors said....

If global warming had been the most powerful influence on land and sea temperatures, those temperatures would have been different, the study's authors said. Most of the warming in the region occurred before 1940, when greenhouse gas concentrations were lower and winds were weaker, the study found. In contrast, winds have strengthened since 1980 and coastal ocean cooled, even as the rise in greenhouse gases has accelerated."...

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Sadly, California Gov. Jerry Brown denies scientific findings: 

9/23/14, "Gov't Scientists: Higher West Coast Temps Due to Natural Causes, not 'Climate Change'," Breitbart, Pollak

"The (LA) Times adds: "This latest research shows that similar changes in atmospheric and ocean circulation can drive trends that last a century or longer, overshadowing the effects of human-generated increase in greenhouse gases, the study's authors said....

On Tuesday, California's Gov. Jerry Brown will address two panel discussions at the UN (climate) gathering. On Sunday, signing several laws aimed at reducing (human caused) climate change, Brown said that "we know in California that carbon pollution kills, it undermines our environment, and, long-term, it's an economic loser," adding "We face an existential challenge with the changes in our climate. The time to act is now. The place to look is California."

Brown has also blamed (human caused) climate change for numerous weather-related phenomena in California, including warm temperatures, a severe drought, and wildfires. "There is no scientific question," Brown said in May, accusing the Republican Party of denying the scientific evidence on climate change. The Governor's Office of Planning and Research maintains a website devoted to refuting climate change "deniers" by referring to scientific data." 


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"A 1 Celsius change is a change of 1.8 Fahrenheit while a 1 Fahrenheit change translates to a change of 0.55 Celsius."

http://fahrenheittocelsius.com/ 





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Washington Nationals Manager doesn't realize Capitalism causes weather, says "We can't do much about the weather." NY Mets at Washington Nationals rained out

9/24/14, "Nationals-Mets postponed, will play doubleheader Thursday with reworked rotation," Washington Post, Adam Kilgore

"The Washington Nationals will play two split doubleheaders in two days after rain postponed their game Wednesday night against the New York Mets. The scheduling forced the Nationals to rework their pitching staff – which may have revealed their plans for their playoff rotation – and makes them play four games in 48 hours as they seek to secure the National League’s best record and homefield advantage for the postseason.

“It’s not ideal, for sure” Manager Matt Williams said. “We can’t do much about the weather. It doesn’t look good tonight, and it doesn’t look like it’s getting out of here before tomorrow morning. Rather than wait around all night, we decided to play two tomorrow. It is what it is. We’re not the only team that’s had to play doubleheaders this year. We got to deal with it.”

The Nationals will make up Wednesday’s game Thursday at 1:05 p.m. Rookie Blake Treinen will start Game 1 and Gio Gonzalez, Wednesday’s originally scheduled starter, will pitch Game 2."...image from ap




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Oakland, California 'climate' rally all about overthrow of capitalism and installation of Communism-Zombie

9/23/14, "Climate Movement Drops Mask, Admits Communist Agenda," Zombie, PJ Media 

"Communists along with a few environmental groups staged a “People’s Climate Rally” in Oakland, California on Sunday, September 21, in conjunction with the larger “People’s Climate March” in New York City on the same day.

Wait — did I say communists? Isn’t that a bit of an exaggeration? well, no.

At the New York event, many people noticed that gee, there sure are a lot of communists at this march. But in Oakland — always on the cutting edge — the entire “climate change” movement at last fully, irrevocably and overtly embraced communism as its stated goal. Any concerns about “optics” or operating in “stealth mode” were abandoned.

The “climate change” “crisis” is now nothing but the latest justification for “total revolution” and getting rid of capitalism forever.

Yes, capitalism itself is the problem. The primary message of the People’s Climate Rally was this: Climate change is caused by capitalism, and merely attempting to reform capitalism will not stop global warming; it is impossible to work within the existing system if we want to save the planet. We must replace it with a new social and economic system entirely.

Until recently, those attacking the capitalist system as the cause of global warming were intentionally a little vague as to what will replace it if we are to solve the problem. But on Sunday in Oakland, that curtain was drawn back and the new system was finally revealed: Communism. Or at least hardcore socialism as Marx defined it — the necessary transitional phase before true complete communism (i.e. no private property, no families, no individualism). Most countries we tend to think of as “communist” actually self-defined as “socialist”: The USSR, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, for example, was (as its name reveals) socialist. I point out this detail in case anybody reading this article thinks that the “socialism” advocated at the rally was merely some kind of squishy soft-hearted semi-capitalism; no, it is the same type of socialism one finds in places generally thought of as communist.

Below you will find irrefutable proof that communist ideologies, organizations and phraseologies have completely moved to the forefront of the "climate change" movment.  (I was originally tempted to say that the communists, as they are wont to do, have merely “co-opted” environmentalism. But that would imply that the goal of global warming scaremongering was something other than “destroying capitalism” in the first place. At this point I now know that destroying capitalism has always been the goal; the only thing that changed on Sunday is that the mask was dropped.)

This proof will necessarily entail posting a lot of photographs; in situations like this, the only way to conclusively demonstrate a point is through repetition of evidence. One could summarize the evidence with a few shorthand images, but that would leave open the possibility that the case was being overstated. To quash that counter-argument before it arises, I will post lots and lots and lots and lots of images from all over the rally, from the sponsors, to the attendees, to the booths, to the speakers, to show beyond any doubt that the entire rally was thoroughly saturated with communism and socialism to the point where these ideologies were the overarching theme of the event.

Ready? All the photos below were taken at the People’s Climate Rally in Oakland on September 21, 2014....

The rally was held on the shores of lovely Lake Merritt. Notice how the banner is careful to cover every potential eventuality:

“Fossil Fuels Cause Sea Rise, Drought+Heatwaves, Extreme Weather, Wild Fires.” Thus, if the storm clouds shown in “Extreme Weather” bring a lot of rain — that’s due to fossils fuels. On the other hand, if there’s no rain (drought) — that would be due to fossil fuels as well. If the landscape is extra dry leading to wildfires — fossil fuels. And if the landscape becomes completely submerged in water — well, that would be fossil fuels’ fault too.

I think we can safely say at this point that whatever happens, it was because of fossil fuels. Sort of a universal axiom....

Code Pink, who despite not having an explicit economic platform of their own are actually further to the left than many of the mere socialist groups in attendance."...

Zombie has many more pictures at the link.
Note a "Free Mumia" poster in background of second picture.