Latif told me: “I don’t know what to do. They just make these things up.” NSIDC Director Serreze says it is “completely false.”

30 Years of Global Cooling Are Coming, Leading Scientist Says

Latif … says we’re in for 30 years of cooler temperatures

Memo to media and anti-science disinformers (again):  If your “global cooling” piece revolves around Dr. Latif, you probably have the entire story backwards. But, at least for the disinformers, that is the goal.  And that goes double if the piece involves the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

In an interview back on October 1, Dr. Latif told me “we don’t trust our forecast beyond 2015″³ and “it is just as likely you’ll see accelerated warming” after then. Indeed, in his published research, rapid warming is all-but-inevitable over the next two decades. He told me, “you can’t miss the long-term warming trend” in the temperature record, which is “driven by the evolution of greenhouse gases.”  Finally, he pointed out “Our work does not allow one to make any inferences about global warming.”

In an interview today, he confirmed that he accepts the IPCC’s finding that most of the warming in the past century was very likely due to human causes — “definitely,” he said.

UPDATE:  Latif spoke to the UK’s Guardian, apparently after we chatted and I emailed him the piece, see “Leading climate scientist challenges Mail on Sunday’s use of his research:  Mojib Latif denies his research supports theory that current cold weather undermines scientific consensus on global warming.”

Latif remains puzzled and dismayed by articles like those in the Daily Mail, “Could we be in for 30 years of global COOLING?” that purport to be based on his work, that supposedly quote him directly, but in fact just make stuff up.   Of course, the Daily Mail made up a lot stuff for this article, like this whopper about the NSIDC’s work:

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Why regulate arsenic? “We eat it every day in our foodstuffs, we drink it every day in our water.”

You won’t believe this until you see it with your own eyes — and maybe not even then.  From the GOP witness to the December 10 hearing on “Drinking Water and Public Health Impacts of Coal Combustion Waste Disposal” — a medical doctor (!):

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Obama’s achievements in climate and clean energy have been unprecedented, as I’ve discussed.  And while he still needs a domestic climate bill and an international deal to be a true success, his accomplishments after one year in office deserve enumerating, if only because the status quo media won’t.  So here is Daniel Weiss in a CAP repost.  The AP photo is of Obama touring a Solar Energy Center in Arcadia, FL last October (see Creating a clean energy economy will require an “all-hands-on-deck approach similar to the mobilization that preceded World War II”¦. I also believe that such a comprehensive piece of legislation that is taking place right now in Congress is going to be critical”).

During President-Elect Barack Obama’s transition, the Center for American Progress proposed a 10-point clean-energy agenda for the president and Congress that would speed the economic transformation to a clean energy economy. A review of these items today finds that all were adopted or are working their way through the process. This is a startling achievement amidst the worst economy in 70 years, two wars, and an opposition party disinterested in cooperation. President Obama did much of what he promised, and he can do more in 2010 by cajoling Congress to do its part.

These achievements will have real world impact. By 2011, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, P.L. 111-5, will double the generation of renewable electricity from the wind, sun, and earth. ARRA will also lead to energy efficiency retrofits in 1 million homes by 2012. And President Obama’s new fuel economy standards would save 1.8 billion barrels of oil. Additional benefits will accrue as the president and Congress finish some 2009 clean-energy initiatives and additional efforts are launched in 2010.

Here’s a review of progress made by the president and Congress over the past year.

1. Wish they all could be California cars

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Smaller, electric cars reign at Detroit auto show

Electric, hybrid and small cars will grab center stage at the Detroit auto show this week, as the industry adapts to a world reshaped by the Great Recession and environmental worries.

The event will demonstrate just how automakers are responding to this new reality. Ford wants to build on its success in midsize sedans and re-ignite its small car sales, while Hyundai aims to extend last year’s triumph in budget-conscious models. GM and Chrysler will start fresh with electric vehicles but also try to boost their small-car credibility. Toyota hopes to solidify its dominance in hybrids.  [An October AP file photo shows the Nissan Leaf and CEO Ghosn.]

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Trenberth: The flaws in Lindzen-Choi paper “have all the appearance of the authors having contrived to get the answer they got.”

Consistently being wrong and consistently producing one-sided analyses that are quickly debunked in the literature should lead scientific journals and the entire scientific community (and possibly the media) to start ignoring your work.

But when you are one of the last remaining “serious” professional scientists spreading global warming disinformation who retains a (nano)ounce of credibility because you are associated with a major university — M.I.T. — and your name is Richard Lindzen, apparently you can just keep publishing and repeating the same crap over and over and over again.

It’s not just that Lindzen’s popular disinformation tracts have been widely debunked — see RealClimate here.  Or that his one remaining big idea — that clouds are negative feedback — has been refuted in the literature [see Science: "Clouds Appear to Be Big, Bad Player in Global Warming,"an amplifying feedback (sorry Lindzen and fellow deniers)].   That idea of course meant ignored the myriad observations that climate impacts are occurring faster, not slower, than the models had predicted, and that therefore the multiple strong amplifying feedbacks are overwhelming whatever few week negative feedbacks occur in the climate system — see Study: Water-vapor feedback is “strong and positive,” so we face “warming of several degrees Celsius” (and below).

At the Heartland conference of climate-change disinformers last year, Lindzen went from disinformation to defamation as he smeared the reputation of one of the greatest living climate scientists, Wallace Broecker (see “Shame on Richard Lindzen, MIT’s uber-hypocritical anti-scientific scientist“).

But still his shoddy work manages to make it through the peer review process of a few journals, and the antiscience crowd eat it up and regurgitates it over the blogosphere like a toddler with H1N1.  His latest nonsense is about to be thoroughly eviscerated in the literature, and RealClimate his multiple posts on how flawed Lindzen’s analysis was and how the peer review process failed.  You should start with “Lindzen and Choi Unraveled” by climate scientists John Fasullo, Kevin Trenberth and Chris O’Dell:

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Godfather of efficiency retires from California Energy Commission

Note:  If readers want to thank Art for his lifetime of work — he gave up an almost certain Nobel prize in physics to pursue energy efficiency — put them in the comments and I’ll make sure he sees them.

When octogenarian Arthur H. Rosenfeld vacates his utilitarian office at the California Energy Commission this week, one of his final tasks might seem of little consequence: He’ll turn off the lights.

But that simple act — some would say compulsion — has transformed California into a world leader in energy efficiency.

My friend and former DOE colleague, Art Rosenfeld is finally retiring as a California Energy Commissioner at the age of 83.  I discussed a little of what Art  has achieved here — “Energy efficiency, Part 4: How does California do it so consistently and cost-effectively?“  If you want to see a full discussion of what this great man has done for the nation, including the video of the funniest talk I’ve ever given, click here for an-all day symposium on his 80th birthday, with talks by Steven Chu and John Holdren.

I hope to get some guest posts from him on his passion cool roofs — see a paper of his at Geoengineering, adaptation and mitigation, Part 2: White roofs are the trillion-dollar solution.  But while he’s settling into his new part-time role at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab Center for Building Science he helped found, I’ll excerpt this piece in today’s LA Times, “You can thank Arthur Rosenfeld for energy savings“:

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The Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis, has a good HuffPost piece on “Green Jobs” I’m reprinting here:

Over the last year, the Obama Administration has been focused on many issues, none more important than creating jobs. We are working hard to sustain economic growth and spur renewed hiring for millions of Americans who need and want work, but cannot find it.

As I have said from day one, my goal is “A Good Job for Everyone.” A good job is one that can support a family by increasing incomes and narrowing the wage gap. A good job is safe and secure, and gives people a voice in the workplace. A good job is sustainable and innovative — like green jobs — that export products not paychecks. And a good job is one that will help to rebuild the middle class.

In this economy that’s a tall order, however I am more confident than ever that we will reach this goal because of the steps we have taken and the investments we have made in the American worker.

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