WEEKEND EDITION FEBRUARY 3-5, 2012

38

The Banks Want to Dump Millions of Risky Mortgages Onto FHA

Obama’s Refinancing Swindle

by MIKE WHITNEY

Barack Obama’s new housing refinance plan has nothing to do with “lowering monthly mortgage payments so responsible borrowers can stay in their homes”. That’s all public relations bunkum. The truth is the banks want to offload their garbage mortgages onto Uncle Sam to avoid hundreds of billions of dollars in losses. That’s what this refi-ruse is really all about.

The administration estimates that 3.5 million people with private label mortgages will be eligible to refinance into loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Many of these are high risk mortgages that will eventually go into foreclosure which is why the banks want to get them off their books. Regrettably, Obama is only too happy to help them achieve that goal. Here’s a little background from the Christian Science Monitor:

“The nation now has about 30 million mortgages backed by government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), mainly Fannie or Freddie…. About 3 million of those are “under water,” meaning the loan is now bigger than home value. Another 20 million or more have been underwritten entirely by private lenders. Some 35 percent of those, 7 million or more, are under water.” (“Obama plan to lower mortgage payments could help, but how much?”, Christian Science Monitor)

Why are so many more “private label” mortgages underwater than loans that were issued by

Fannie or Freddie?

Because the banks were lending money to every Tom, Dick and Harry who could fog a mirror. It was all a big joke. The banks didn’t really give a hoot if the borrowers were creditworthy or not because they were bundling the mortgages together into mortgage backed securities (MBS) and selling them off to investors around the world, so documentation and loan standards didn’t really matter to them. They got their pound of flesh whether the loans blew up or not. Here’s a little refresher from the Washington Post on how we got to where we are today:

“The biggest culprits in the housing fiasco came from the private sector, and more specifically from a mortgage industry that was out of control. These included lenders who originated home

loans, investment bankers who packaged them into securities, rating agencies that misjudged these securities, and global investors who bought them without much, if any, study….

Between 2004 and 2007, private lenders originated three quarters of all subprime and alt-A mortgage loans. These were loans to financially fragile homeowners with credit scores under 660, well below the U.S. average, which is closer to 700. But only a fourth of such loans were originated by government agencies, including Fannie, Freddie and the Federal Housing Administration.

The dollar amount of subprime and alt-A loans made during this period by the private sector was jaw-dropping, reaching nearly $600 billion at the height of the lending frenzy in 2006. …. By contrast, government lenders made just over $100 billion in subprime and alt-A loans in 2006. Even in 2007, when the housing market was beginning its free fall, private lenders still handed out more than $300 billion via these very shaky mortgage loans…(“Fannie and Freddie don’t deserve blame for bubble,” Mark Zandi, Washington Post)

The vast amount of bad mortgages were generated by privately-owned banks, not government-sponsored entities. Keep that in mind the next time your loudmouth brother-in-law starts spouting off about how the GSE’s or the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) caused the financial meltdown. The banks were 100 percent responsible. And now they’re back for a double-dip because they still have tons of these wilting loans in their vaults and they need to get rid of them pronto. And that’s where Obama comes in. The banks are counting on the dissembler in chief to make it look like this refi-claptrap is really an effort to “provide a bit of relief for an ailing economy” or “to help working folks make their mortgage payment”. It’s all hogwash.

The reason the banks have waited this long (for another bailout) is because the 50-state robosigning case has dragged on longer than they’d anticipated. They figured the 50 state Attorneys General would roll over and play dead like the other politicians they deal with. But that hasn’t happened. The legal fight continues with no end in sight. What the banks are hoping for is a ruling “that prevents states from effectively challenging future foreclosure actions that are based on faulty prior assignments.” In other words, they want to be able to boot you out of your home whether they have proper documentation or not.

Meanwhile, the backlog of homes (that’s in some stage of foreclosure) continues to grow to record levels. When the sluice-gates  finally open, an ocean of distressed homes will surge onto the market sending prices plunging and leaving bank balance sheets deep in the red. Here’s more from CNBC’s Diana Olick:

“To give you an idea of just how much the “robo” scandal is toying with the numbers, LPS compared states that require foreclosures to go through the courts versus states that don’t (judicial versus non-judicial) and found the following:

- 50 percent of loans in foreclosure in judicial states have not made a payment in two years, as opposed to 28 percent in non-judicial states.

Foreclosure sale rates in non-judicial states are about four times those in judicial states.” (“Robo-Reality: Final Foreclosures Fall as Pipeline Swells” Realty Check, CNBC)

The backlog of distressed homes is much greater than the data would indicate. Neither the official nor the shadow inventory accurately accounts for the bulging number of homes (10 million) currently in the pipeline.

That’s why the administration is looking for creative ways to whittle down the supply. One idea is to sell foreclosures in bulk to deep-pocket investors with the proviso that they convert them into rentals. But why give Wall Street fatcats the privilege of buying foreclosures at a discount when mom and pop investors are already scarfing them up like hotcakes? How fair is that?

The driving force behind the foreclosures-to-rental scam is that the banks want to remove the GSE’s stock of distressed homes from the competition so they can fetch a better price when their REO’s hit the market. Once again, the policy is being tailored to meet the needs of the banks not the people. Here’s more from Olick about the risks this poses to FHA:

“Critics will also argue that the FHA, which now has an inordinately, historically large share of the mortgage market, is in no position to take on any more risk. The FHA could be considered “underwater” itself, guaranteeing about $1 trillion in mortgages but sitting on just a $1.2 billion dollar cushion to cover losses.

To that end, officials say they could create a separate fund for these loans, not the regular mutual mortgage insurance fund (MMI). This would be a special risk fund, designed to handle high losses.” (“Obama’s Mortgage Refi Plan to Go Through FHA”, CNBC)

How do you like that? The FHA is already leveraged at 100-to-1 and the banks want to add even more debt. And they want to do it in the most deceptive way possible, by creating an off-balance sheet investment vehicle where the red ink can be hidden from public view.

To be eligible for Obama’s refi-program, borrowers will need a credit score (FICO) above 580,(which is extremely low), they’ll have to be employed, and they’ll have to be current on their mortgage payments. (for the last 6 months) In other words, lending standards are being eased so the banks can dump as many high-risk mortgages on the FHA as possible. Obama breezily refers to these abysmal lending standards as “cutting through the red tape.”

Applicants will also be able to refinance under the Obama’s program with loan balances up to (get this) 140 percent of the value of their home. So, even if you owe $560,000 on a home that is currently worth $400,000–and you don’t have a dime’s worth of equity in the house–have no fear–you can still get money from Uncle Sugar. This isn’t a good way to keep people in their homes. It just turns them into debt slaves.

One last thing, all the talk about a “bank tax” is pure blather. The banks will be more than happy to cough-up $5 billion or so if it means they’ll be able to jettison the hundreds of billions in crappy loans on their books. As far as they’re concerned, that’s money “well spent”.

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com

WEEKEND EDITION FEBRUARY 3-5, 2012

31

"It's Okay to Take Off Your Gas Mask"

Occupy Oakland: Are We Being Childish?

by OSHA NEUMAN

“The Bay Area Occupy Movement has got to stop using Oakland as their playground,” said Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, speaking at a press conference Saturday evening after a day of demonstrations called by Occupy Oakland that saw approximately 400 arrests, multiple injuries, and numerous confrontations with police. She ticked off the damage that had been done when a group of protesters broke into City Hall, overturning a scale model of the building, vandalizing a children’s art exhibit, and burning an American flag. The next day in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, she returned to her talking point: “It’s like a tantrum . .  . They’re treating us like a playground.”

For the first time since October when the Oakland police violently evicted the occupation from Frank Ogawa Plaza after renaming it in honor of Oscar Grant, Mayor Quan, her protesting days behind her, looked genuinely comfortable in the role of champion of law and order. It was as if by trashing City Hall, Occupy had done her a favor. She was the adult, genuinely concerned with the well-being of the city. We were children, playing childish games, oblivious to the serious real-world consequences of our actions.

Occupy’s response to the mayor’s scolding was predictable. On KPFA the next day, Marie, speaking as a representative of the movement, was unapologetic. “The war in 

the streets is a visible manifestation of the invisible war on the poor . . . the violence of the capitalist system.”  In a statement put out by the Occupy Oakland media committee, Cathy Jones, an attorney with the National Lawyers Guild, is quoted as saying: “Never have I felt so helpless and enraged as I do tonight. These kids are heroes, and the rest of the country needs to open its collective eyes and grab what remains of its civil rights, because they are evaporating, quickly.” She agrees with Mayor Quan that those of us who were in the forefront in the confronting the police were “kids,” but for her they were “heroic.” For Mayor Quan they were just bratty.

Power always represents itself as adult, rationale and in control. The socially sanctioned definition of what it is to be adult includes the ability to be compliant with the self-repression required of an obedient and productive member of society. Since those of us in opposition have no desire to be obedient and less to be productive cogs in the machine, it’s no wonder we fall into the role of defiant children.

It may be inevitable that in the confrontation between radical movements and the systems they oppose there are echoes of the conflict between child and adult. We who march in the streets in defiance of the orders of the police have legitimate reason to rage against the system. It in no way negates the legitimacy of that rage to say that it may also have an “infantile” component.

Occupy is not a monolith. On Saturday within the motley of demonstrators one group stood out. They were the “kids” with the black bandannas and hoodies. Some carried makeshift shields constructed from segments of plastic trash cans painted black with peace signs spray-painted in white on the front. Some carried impressive movable barricades composed of rectangular sheets of strong corrugated steel, screwed to wooden frames to which handles had been attached so that three or four people could hunker behind them and push them into lines of police. It was this group that was in the forefront in the attempt to pull down the chain-link fence around the Kaiser Convention Center. A takeover of that center had been announced as the goal of the demonstration. Thwarted in that effort, the group got into a confrontation with a line of police blocking Oak Street south of the intersection with 12^th. This black block of anarchist youth tends to identify with insurrectionist anarchism. They are our militants who will be the first to challenge the police, and who proudly proclaim their disrespect for property rights. I imagine that for them the rest of us appear as somewhat compromised and a bit timid, for we are unwilling to go as far as they in our commitment to the revolution. Here something of the dynamic between child and adult reemerges as a political division within the movement. We who do not come to demonstrations dressed in black become the model of a not quite legitimate “maturity;” the purest revolutionary energies are represented by those who reject this maturity, as a fraud — the heroic kids.

Jean Quan’s insinuates that we act like children. I say “we”, because the black bloc is part of us; we cannot disown them. Infuriating as her charge may be, I think it contains something worth looking at. Her version of being grown-up is compromised. If to be a grownup means to live forever within the confines of the system, let us all be Peter Pans. But in our righteous rejection of her version of adulthood there lies a danger. The danger is that without being aware of it, we are unable truly to imagine winning; that we remain heroic “kids,” endlessly reenacting a drama in which we are abused by the authorities. (It might be worthwhile looking at whether we get a masochistic pleasure in being fucked over by them.)

At 7:37 PM on Saturday, I was relaxing at home when I got a text message from the Occupy Oakland alert system: “People have broken into City Hall. Standoff with police. Support needed.” I got into my car and drove downtown. By the time I arrived, the police had surrounded the building. I walked in an unguarded side door and caught a glimpse of a hallway strewn with overturned wastebaskets before a squad of police arrived and demanded that I leave.

Outside in the plaza people were milling about. I overheard someone say that the tires of a Channel 5 television truck had been slashed and an unsuccessful effort had been made to pull the camera from the shoulder of a cameraman. An ambulance pulled up on 12th St., its lights flashing. Photographers swarmed around it as paramedics wheeled up a gurney and loaded an injured person into the back. I heard someone shout, “This is what the police did.” A newspaper the next day reported that the person on the gurney was a pregnant woman who’d been jabbed in the spleen by the police. I hope she does not lose her spleen. I hope she does not lose her child. If we are playing games, they are dangerous games.

After the ambulance left, a woman dressed in black took a bullhorn, stood at the top of the steps at the edge of the plaza and shouted: “Mike check. Who wants to go on a Fuck the Police March?”  A good part of the crowd ignored her, but a number of fists shot into the air, and there were shouts of approval. A group of about150 people started to move into the intersection at 14th and Telegraph.

It is at this point that my attention was drawn to a boy who walked out into the street to join the group assembling for the march. He looked to be between eight and ten years old. His wore a gas mask that completely concealed his face and a metal helmet. From his belt hung a pair of leather gloves. The gas mask was odd, because there was only one police officer in the area and he was sitting nonchalantly on his motorcycle. None of the other demonstrators were wearing gas masks. The boy didn’t swagger, nor did he show any signs of timidity. He was holding a small digital camera and taking photographs. I looked around to see whether there was an adult with him, but he appeared to be completely alone. What was he doing there? Where were his parents? Why was nobody paying any attention to him?

My old man’s heart went out to that boy. I was tired after marching, around half a day. I felt a bit intimidated by the unwillingness I sensed in the boy’s manner to be treated as a child. The Fuck the Police march was about to take off. I didn’t do what I wanted to do — go over and talk to him. He was a child, trying to act like an adult, and in many ways pulling it off, while the adults around him were playing their dangerous games in the playground of the revolution.

Later, when I got home, I had another thought, tangentially related in my mind to the problem posed for me by the little boy and that big girl, Jean Quan, with her playground analogy. We need to be a movement that, while remaining militant, demonstrates clearly it has overcome its self absorption, and can reach out to those who have lived a lot of life, suffered and managed against all odds to preserve some dignity, who have remained afloat in a sea of troubles, who care for the young, the old and the sick, for neighbors families and friends. On Saturday, I looked around as we marched through the streets. We were, a few gray hairs excepted, overwhelmingly young. We were primarily, though by no means exclusively white. We did not look much like a cross-section of the blighted neighborhoods of Oakland where an ever present struggle is taking place against poverty and hopelessness, where foreclosed houses stand empty, and the unemployed idle on the corner under the watchful eye of the police.

I believe we need to be a movement against repression that can be self regulating. We need a movement that is capable at the same time of proclaiming “Freedom now,” and “Freedom not quite yet.” In its best moments the Occupy movement has been that. But sometimes it has been unable to maintain the balance. Saturday was one of the days when things got out of whack.

How could it have been different? The goal of taking over the Kaiser Center for community use was admirable, even brilliant, but in the end the point of what was billed as “Move-in day” got lost in meaningless rumbles with the police and the trashing of City Hall. (A note of caution here: Since no was arrested in the City Hall trashing, we cannot rule out that it was the work of agents provocateurs. Be that as it may, the failure to obtain our objective and to control the meaning of our actions cannot be blamed on infiltrators.) What if, instead of a group within Occupy picking a target and then calling for a day of action, we had initiated a campaign to make that building available for community use? We could have gone out into the neighborhoods, held meetings, where we would discuss whether people liked the idea of occupying the building and what they would like to see happen in the space. With our numbers swelled and diversified by those we had organized, we could make demands to the mayor and the city council in the name of the people. We could legitimately say our movement represented the 99%. Those whom we had been organized would speak eloquently. If we succeeded and were given the space for the community, it would be a great victory. If, as is more likely, our eloquence fell on deaf ears, then we could have our day of action; we would bring thousands into the streets, we would march on the Center, we would not have to conceal the location of our target till the last moment. Perhaps during the night a clandestine group would have broken into the building. We would ring the building in great numbers. Now would be the time for militancy, for tearing down fences, for breaking through police lines, as well as perhaps for nonviolent sit-ins.

This scenario might not be acceptable to insurrectionist anarchists who do not wish to make any demands on government. No doubt, it is open to criticism. I admit it’s an example of backstreet movement driving. But I think if we could more effectively combine organizing and militancy it would be much more difficult to make the case that we were treating Oakland like our playground. Those who really treat this country like their playground are the 1%. And somewhere in the mix of organizing and action that I imagine, I see a place for that little boy. I see a movement that would look after him, and gently tell him “It’s okay to take off your gas mask.” Come with us.

Osha Neumann is the author of Up Against the Wall MotherF**ker: a Memoir of the 60s with Notes for Next Time. He is a lawyer in Berkeley California who specializes in the civil rights of people who are homeless.

What do we know about our climate? (Not as much as we need to!)

3 FEBRUARY 2012

tags: anthropogenic causes, causes of climate change, climate, climate change,climate science, global cooling, sea surface temperature

by Fabius Maximus

Summary:  This is the second in a series of posts examining what we know about global temperature trends.  The first discussed the strong consensus about the warming of the past two centuries.  This post shows the consensus about the stabilization of global temperatures during the past decade (roughly).  Both sides of the public debate (among laymen) try to obscure these simple facts in order to advance their own interests.

Chapters in this series

1. What we know about our past climate, and its causes
2. What we know about the present climate
3. Forecasts and causes of future climate
4. What we’re learning about climate, and recommendations

Contents of this post

This post shows the statements about recent global temperature trends by a few of the many experts working on climate science issues.  They represent a broad range of perspectives in the climate science field.  Jones and Hanson are mainstream figures; Whitehouse is a skeptic; the Berkeley project is a new attempt to resolves some of these issues.  Also shown is the satellite record, left to speak for itself.

1. Phil Jones, director of the Climate Research Unit at UEA
2. James Hanson, NASA
3. David Whitehouse of the Global Warming Policy Foundation
4. The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project
5. Global Sea Surface temperatures
6. The satellite record
7. For more information: other posts about climate science

(1)  “Q&A: Professor Phil Jones“, BBC, 13 February 2010 –BBC’s environment analyst Roger Harrabin interviews Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA).

Question: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming

Dr. Jones:  Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009.  This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level.  The positive trend is quite close to the significance level.  Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

Question:  Do you agree that from January 2002 to the present there has been statistically significant global cooling?

Dr. Jones:  No. This period is even shorter than 1995-2009.  The trend this time is negative (-0.12C per decade), but this trend is not statistically significant.

(2)  “Global Temperature in 2011, Trends, and Prospects“, James Hansen et al, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Sciences, 18 January 2012

Thus, although the current global warming graphs (Figs. 2, 3 and the upper part of Fig. 7) are suggestive of a slowdown in global warming, this apparent slowdown may largely disappear as a few more years of data are added.  In particular we need to see how high global temperature rises in response to the next El Niño, and we also need to consider the effect of the 10-12 year cycle of solar irradiance.  This raises the question of when the next El Niño will occur and the status of the solar cycle.

(3)  David Whitehouse (former Science correspondence of the BBC, PhD Astrophysics from U Manchester), Global Warming Policy Foundation, 31 December 2011 (red emphasis added):

It showed no increase in temperature. It has been often stated that there has been no statistically significant warming in the various temperature datasets since the start of this century, and this is now generally accepted. Pushing it back a few more years is possible. The years 1999 and 2000 were slightly cooler than the post-2001 data but since 1998, a strong El Nino year, is higher they provide compensation for each other. Thus if you look at the trend since 1997 you can easily see, and calculate, that it is negligible.

It is also possible to push it back a few more years still, according to the brief calculations made by Prof Phil Jones. It seems that 1995 – 2009 is flat, but 1995 – 2010 has a slight positive trend, though not at any impressive significance. It should be noted that 1995 – 2011 is back to no significant increase.

Statistically speaking it is accurate to say that according to HadCrut3 the world’s temperature has not increased for the 16 years between 1995 and 2011, though many prefer the more conservative ten years post-2001. This is not a ‘sceptical’ claim just a straightforward description of the data.

… The world has warmed since the start of the current warming spell that started around 1980 and each decade has been warmer than the previous one. … It is curious that the small data set of the recent warming spell (only thirty numbers or so if annual data is used) has been argued about, analysed and misrepresented for so long by climatologists and activists.

(4)  The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, from the Frequently Asked Questions page of their website.  (red emphasis added)

Has Global Warming Stopped?

Some people have suggested that there has been no global warming over the past 13 years, and they ask whether our land-only analysis verifies that. The graph shows the results of our analysis with 1-year averaging (to smooth it) for the last 6 decades so you can better see the period in question. The blue curve is the result of our analysis, and the grey lines represent our 95% confidence limit.

From the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project

The large fluctuations up and down that take place every few years correlate very strongly with the North Atlantic temperatures (the AMO index) and with El Nino (ENSO index 3.4). See our paper on “Decadal Variations in the Global Atmospheric Land Temperatures” for analysis of that. The presence of these fluctuations makes any strong extrapolations from short-term behavior uncertain.

Some people draw a line segment covering the period 1998 to 2010 and argue that we confirm no temperature change in that period. However, if you did that same exercise back in 1995, and drew a horizontal line through the data for 1980 to 1995, you might have falsely concluded that global warming had stopped back then. This exercise simply shows that the decadal fluctuations are too large to allow us to make decisive conclusions about long term trends based on close examination of periods as short as 13 to 15 years.

Do Judith Curry and Richard Muller disagree?

Below is a joint statement by Judith Curry (Professor and Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology ) and Richard Muller (Prof of Physics at Berkeley):

In recent days, statements we’ve made to the media and on blogs have been characterized as contradictory. They are not.

We have both said that the global temperature record of the last 13 years shows evidence suggesting that the warming has slowed. Our new analysis of the land-based data neither confirms nor denies this contention. If you look at our new land temperature estimates, you can see a flattening of the rise, or a continuation of the rise, depending on the statistical approach you take.

Continued global warming “skepticism” is a proper and a necessary part of the scientific process. The Wall St. Journal Op-Ed by one of us (Muller) seemed to take the opposite view with its title and subtitle: “The Case Against Global-Warming Skepticism — There were good reasons for doubt, until now.” But those words were not written by Muller. The title and the subtitle of the submitted Op-Ed were “Cooling the Warming Debate – Are you a global warming skeptic? If not, perhaps you should be. Let me explain why.” The title and subtitle were changed by the editors without consulting or seeking permission from the author. Readers are encouraged to ignore the title and read the content of the Op-Ed.

We do not agree with each other on every feature of climate change. We have had vigorous discussions, for example, on the proper way to analyze hurricane records. Such disagreements are an essential part of the scientific process.

(5)  Global Sea Surface temperatures (SST)

The temperature datasets that get the most attention measure land surface temperatures. Not only are the seas 70% of the Earth’s surface, but the oceans are the primary reservoir of heat for the coupled sea-air system in which we live. Unfortunately we don’t have good historical data (for this purpose) before roughly 1982.  There are several datasets of accurate global SST data after the earlly 1980s; for details see Bob Tisdale’s “An Overview Of Sea Surface Temperature Datasets Used In Global Temperature Products“.

Here is a graph of NOAA Sea Surface Temperature data from Bob Tisdale’s website, which combines both direct measurements (ie, ships and buoys) and satellite data)  Again, no warming this decade.  SST’s show the effect of the large decadal-scale cycles (eg, La Nina – El Nino in the tropical Pacific), which effect global temperatures.

From Bob Tilsdale's website

The Argo project, a net work of high-tech buoys fully deployed in 2007, now provides high quality data of global ocean temperatures at various depths.  This will answer many questions about climate dynamics, and allow development of better modesls.  For more information see:

• Argo.net Home page
• Argo at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography

(6)  The satellite temperature record

Satellite data is often described by non-experts as the definitive source of global temperatures.

For more about satellite climate data see this article by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), 6 February 2012

Satellites do not measure temperature directly; instead they measure the amount of radiation incident on their sensors at various key wavelengths and sometimes polarizations associated with different meteorological phenomena and different sections of the atmosphere or surface. Those data are then processed by different groups using various methods to yield temperature equivalents.

It gets even more complex.  Adjustments must be made for sensor decay, change of satellite orbits, and replacement of satellites.

There are three major datasets:  the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Remote Sensing Systems (RSS, data from NASA satellites), and the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH).  This graph from the NIST article shows the recent temperature plateau.

From the NIST website, 6 February 2012

Here is the UAH data through January 2012 (source: Roy Spencer, co-developer of the data series)

From Dr. Roy Spencer's website

(6)  Other early articles noting the stabilization of global temperatures

• “What happened to global warming?“, BBC, 9 October 2009
• “World will ‘cool for the next decade’“, New Scientist, 9 September 2009 — Summary of forecasts about decadal cooling (e.g., “Advancing decadal-scale climate prediction in the North Atlantic sector“, Mojib Latif et al, Nature, 1 May 2008
• “Climatologists Baffled by Global Warming Time-Out“, Der Spiegel, 19 November 2009
• “World may not be warming, say scientists“, The Times, 14 February 2010

(5)  For more information: other posts about climate science

(a)  For more information see the other FM Reference Pages:

• Science and Nature – my articles.
• Science & nature – studies & reports
• Science & Nature – general media articles
• Articles from the 1970′s about global cooling/warming

Posts about melting polar ice and rising sea levels:

1. An example of important climate change research hidden, lest it spoil the media’s narrative, 22 May 2009
2. About that melting arctic ice cap, 17 April 2010
3. Fear or Fail: about the melting Greenland ice sheet, 24 May 2010
4. Today’s good news, about rising sea levels, 3 June 2010 — Esp note the links to articles and studies!
5. It’s time to worry (again) about disappearing arctic ice, 8 June 2010
6. Climate Armageddon postponed (again): the melting polar ice, 9 October 2010
7. Looking into the past for guidance about warnings of future climate apocalypses, 17 October 2010