 .jpg)   GREENIE WATCH -- MIRROR Warmist crooks above: Keith "One tree" Briffa; Michael "Bristlecone" Mann; James "data distorter" Hansen; Phil "data destroyer" Jones -- Leading members in the cabal of climate quacks |
Against the long history of huge temperature variation in the earth's climate (ice ages etc.), the .6 of one degree average rise reported for the entire 20th century by the United Nations (a rise so small that you would not be able to detect such a difference personally without instruments) shows in fact that the 20th century was a time of exceptional temperature stability.
There is an "ascetic instinct" (or perhaps a "survivalist instinct") in many people that causes them to delight in going without material comforts. Monasteries and nunneries were once full of such people -- with the Byzantine stylites perhaps the most striking example. Many Greenies (other than Al Gore and his Hollywood pals) have that instinct too but in the absence of strong orthodox religious committments they have to convince themselves that the world NEEDS them to live in an ascetic way. So their personal emotional needs lead them to press on us all a delusional belief that the planet needs "saving".
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18 March, 2010
Sometimes you can't win
The food freaks tell food manufacturers that saturated fats and trans fats are harmful to health (both claims are a fantasy but tell a big enough lie often enough ....) so many manufacturers have moved to the next workable possibility -- which is palm oil. But now that's no good either! Using palm oil harms the environment, we hear. It probably does but it is the fanatics that have created the problem, not the food manufacturers. If Greenpeace were a serious organization (I will wait for the laughter at that idea to subside), it is the food freaks they should be attacking. But food freaks and Greenies seem to be largely the same people so there is not much hope of that
GREENPEACE has accused the world's leading food and drinks company, Nestlé, of having an ad featuring an office worker eating orang-utan fingers removed from YouTube. The video, which was launched overnight, parodies Nestle's KitKat ads and shows an unwitting office worker taking a break to enjoy a KitKat but instead bites into an orang-utan’s finger, causing blood to stream down his face. The video can be viewed at www.greenpeace.org/kitkat.
“Nestlé today admitted that they have been using palm oil from the destroyed rainforest homes of the last orang-utans in some of their products, but having our video removed proves they are still trying to hide that fact," Greenpeace Head of Campaigns, Steve Campbell, said. "This is an apparent attempt to silence the truth that some of its most popular brands use palm oil from destroyed rainforests and peatlands. “We’ll continue to put the video up on other websites until Nestlé removes all rainforest destroying palm oil from its supply chain."
Protests took place overnight across Europe at Nestlé’s headquarters and factories in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands after the company's admission to using palm oil. They called on Nestlé staff to urge the company to stop using palm oil from the world’s worst suppliers in Indonesia.
Globally, Nestlé is a major consumer of palm oil. In the last three years, its annual use has almost doubled, with 320,000 tonnes of palm oil going into a range of products, including KitKat, according to Greenpeace.
SOURCE. (Reference on trans fats here. Reference on saturated fats here)
The real danger: Future low solar activity periods may cause extremely cold winters in North America, Europe and Russia
By Jarl R. Ahlbeck. (The writer is D.Sc. and lecturer at Abo Akademi University, Finland)
The observed winter temperatures for Turku, Finland (and also generally for North America, Europe and Russia) for the past 60 winters have been strongly dependent on the Arctic Oscillation index (AO). When the Arctic Oscillation index is in "positive phase", high atmospheric pressure persists south of the North Pole, and lower pressures on the North Pole. In the positive phase, very cold winter air does not extend as far south into the middle of North America as it would during the negative phase. The AO positive phase is often called the "Warm" phase in North America.
In this report I analyzed the statistical relation between the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation index (QBO is a measure of the direction and strength of the stratospheric wind in the Tropics), the solar activity, and the Arctic Oscillation index and obtained a statistically significant regression equation.
According to this equation, during negative (easterly) values of the QBO, low solar activity causes a negative Arctic Oscillation index and cold winters in North America, Europe and Russia, but during positive (westerly) values of the QBO the relation reverses. However, the influence of the combination of an easterly value of the QBO and low solar activity on the AO is stronger and this combination is much more probable than the opposite. Therefore, prolonged low solar activity periods in the future may cause the domination of a strongly negative AO and extremely cold winters in North America, Europe and Russia.
SOURCE. (Full article downloadable at source)
Rearguard action over the Amazonian rainforests
Warmists have been predicting drought that would kill off the Amazon rainforests. Recent data have however suggested the opposite: That the forests actually flourished during a dry period. Warmist scientists were horrified, of course and we now see a study designed to claw back that pesky finding. In the end, however, they still ended up with a pretty pesky conclusion: That drought has no overall effect on the forest: "There was no co-relation between drought severity and greenness". See the GRL abstract below:
Amazon forests did not green-up during the 2005 drought
By Arindam Samanta et al.
The sensitivity of Amazon rainforests to dry-season droughts is still poorly understood, with reports of enhanced tree mortality and forest fires on one hand, and excessive forest greening on the other. Here, we report that the previous results of large-scale greening of the Amazon, obtained from an earlier version of satellite-derived vegetation greenness data - Collection 4 (C4) Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), are irreproducible, with both this earlier version as well as the improved, current version (C5), owing to inclusion of atmosphere-corrupted data in those results. We find no evidence of large-scale greening of intact Amazon forests during the 2005 drought - approximately 11%–12% of these drought-stricken forests display greening, while, 28%–29% show browning or no-change, and for the rest, the data are not of sufficient quality to characterize any changes. These changes are also not unique - approximately similar changes are observed in non-drought years as well. Changes in surface solar irradiance are contrary to the speculation in the previously published report of enhanced sunlight availability during the 2005 drought. There was no co-relation between drought severity and greenness changes, which is contrary to the idea of drought-induced greening. Thus, we conclude that Amazon forests did not green-up during the 2005 drought.
SOURCE
Simplistic Warmist assumptions about Siberian permafrost detonated
You’ve heard it a thousand times before – greenhouse gases are causing the Earth to warm, there is more warming in the Arctic than other parts of the planet, and the permafrost is melting away. Remind the world that permafrost holds carbon and methane that can be released into the atmosphere, throw in some pictures of a drunken forest, claim that the permafrost melting is some type of global warming time bomb, and you will be embraced by the global warming alarmists. Do a web search on the subject of global warming and permafrost melting for 1,000s of additional ideas.
We have covered the permafrost issue before, and over and over, this story seems to be far more complex than one might expect. A recent article in Global Change Biology is yet another addition to the complicated warming = melting of permafrost issue.
We have covered the permafrost issue before, and over and over, this story seems to be far more complex than one might expect. A recent article in Global Change Biology is yet another addition to the complicated warming = melting of permafrost issue. The article was produced by four scientists with Wageningen University in The Netherlands, the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and the Russian Academy of Sciences, Siberian Division in Yakutsk.
Blok et al. start off explaining “Climate change has caused rapid environmental changes at northern high latitudes. Atmospheric warming is expected to continue in the future, especially in the Arctic region. Climate models predict a mean annual temperature rise of 5°C in the Arctic by the end of this century. A rise in temperature may have important consequences for the stability of permafrost soils, which are thought to store twice as much carbon as is currently present in the atmosphere. Siberian permafrost soils in particular contain a significant reservoir of easily decomposable organic carbon. Given that the decomposition of organic matter is largely controlled by permafrost conditions, there are fears that if the permafrost thaws, much of the carbon stored will be released to the atmosphere. Thawing permafrost might thus trigger important feedback effects between further climate change and soil carbon release.”
We’ve heard this all before.
Blok et al. then start throwing some doubt into the picture as they note “It is unclear how permafrost will respond to a warmer climate: a recent discovery of ancient permafrost that survived several warm geological periods suggests that vegetation cover may help protect permafrost from climate warming.” Furthermore, they remind us “However, higher air temperature does not necessarily lead to higher soil temperature: it has been demonstrated that increases in air temperature sometimes lead to vegetation changes that offset the effect of air warming on soil temperature.”
One of the expected changes in the Arctic is an expansion of dwarf birch (a.k.a., Betula nana, or more simply, B. nana); the plant grows to about three to four feet tall with shiny red-copper colored bark and leaves than are rounded with a bluntly toothed margin. The plants shade the ground, alter snow cover, and ultimately change land-surface properties that might protect permafrost from higher summer temperatures.
Blok et al. headed to northeastern Siberia at a site where “Regional climate data (Chokurdakh airport weather station, 1999–2006) show mean annual air temperatures of -10.5°C and average July temperatures of 10.4°C.” In case you cannot think in degrees Celsius, -10.5°C for average annual temperature equates to 13°F – their study site is far from paradise! They explain “We selected circular plots of 10m diameter, located in the two different sites. In total, there were 20 plots: 10 plots per site. The two sites were chosen because of their difference in relative cover of plant functional types; together the two sites cover most of the terrain types in the area.”
To the bottom line we go! As seen in the figure below, they found that as the plots were covered by more and more dwarf birch, the active layer thickness decreased. The active layer is the not-frozen (in summer) soil layer above the permafrost, and as seen in a different light, the plot shows that the permafrost is thicker in plots with greater coverage of dwarf birch.
Blok et al. comment “However, under multiple scenarios of climate change it is expected that tundra biomass will increase, mainly because of B. nana and combined with the observed negative relationship in natural vegetation, our experimental results suggest that increased shrub biomass may slow down the expected future increase in permafrost thaw with climate warming.” Furthermore, “Similar findings were observed in a model study, where permafrost thaw was found to be less under a shrub canopy than under unvegetated ground.”
Next up, Blok et al. note “Global temperature data show that the mean annual air temperature in northeast Siberia increased by 1.5–2°C between 2001 and 2007, compared with the 1951–1980 average. This is much higher than the observed 0.5°C average global surface temperature rise during this period. Permafrost temperature records, however, do not show a general warming trend during the last decade, despite large increases in surface air temperature. Data from several Siberian Arctic permafrost stations do not show a discernible trend between 1991 and 2000. Our results suggest that an expansion of deciduous shrubs in the Arctic triggered by climate warming may buffer permafrost from warming resulting from higher air temperatures.”
Next, we learn “Failure to fully understand the effect of climate change and related vegetation shifts on permafrost thermodynamics is hampering predictions on future permafrost thaw. We have presented the first experimental evidence that the expansion of deciduous shrubs in the Arctic triggered by climate warming may reduce summer permafrost thaw. This vegetation change may partly offset the permafrost degradation expected to result from the air temperature rise predicted for the coming decades.”
Blok et al. conclude “These results suggest that the expected expansion of deciduous shrubs in the Arctic region, triggered by climate warming, may reduce summer permafrost thaw. Increased shrub growth may thus partially offset further permafrost degradation by future temperature increases. Permafrost models need to include a dynamic vegetation component to accurately predict future permafrost thaw.”
Enough said!
More HERE (See the original for links, graphics etc.)
Hilarious "Scientific" Support Of AGW In SF Chronicle Earns Beatdown
Here's one from a few days ago I ran across, which already has garnered over 840 comments, most of them seemingly taking the writer, Peter Gleick, to task for his climahysterical article. Let's see, shall we?
Here is the best argument against global warming:First, it is not an argument against global warming. It is against man caused (anthropogenic, man induced, whatever you want to term it) global warming, or, as you folks call it, climate change, since you, in such a self-described scientific manner, link everything into it. Hot, cold, wet, dry, snow, tornadoes, hurricanes or lack thereof, frogs dying, species being found, allergies, etc and so on. Second, it is not incumbent upon us "deniers" to prove our theory, based on 4 billion years of history. You have to prove yours.
. . . .
Oh, right. There isn't one.
There is no good argument against global warming. In all the brouhaha about tiny errors recently found in the massive IPCC report, the posturing by global climate deniers, including some elected officials, leaked emails, and media reports, here is one fact that seems to have been overlooked:
Third, those "tiny" errors are not actually tiny. Many of them are primary points within the UN IPCC, used to "prove" their whole position.
Those who deny that humans are causing unprecedented climate change have never, ever produced an alternative scientific argument that comes close to explaining the evidence we see around the world that the climate is changing.I'll leave that to the professionals at this moment, but, I did notice something, Pete. Do you mind if I call you Pete? Nowhere in you article do you provide a scientific argument that explains how the current warming period is caused "most likely," to us, in the IPCC vernacular, by Mankind. Sucks to be you. Oh, hey, can you explain the "no statistical warming over the last 15 years," or that the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than today, as told by Phil Jones? How about all the "missing" data? Or that temperature upticks precede CO2? Or.....well, we all know the reality. Can we move Peter from stage 1 of the 5 stages of grief?
Here is the way scientists think science works: Ideas and theories are proposed to explain the scientific principles we understand, the evidence we see all around us, and the mathematical models we use to test theories. Alternative theories compete.Uh huh
Gore, the self-anointed climate change alarmist-in-chief, told supporters on a March 15 conference call that severe weather in certain regions of the country could be attributed to carbon in the atmosphere – including the recent rash of rainy weather.There's your "scientific" theory, Pete. If everything can be blamed on global warming, it is no longer science, it is tautology.
Scientists are used to debating facts with each other, with the best evidence and theory winning. Well, this is a bar fight, where the facts are irrelevant, and apparently, the rules and tools of science are too. But who wins bar fights? As the Simpsons cartoon so brilliantly showed, bullies. Not always the guy who is right.Al Gore is not a scientist, Pete. Nor is Barack Obama, nor are the Democrats (and Lindsay Graham) who are pushing this. Nor are a good chunk of those who wrote the IPCC. Hmmph. Strange, huh?
Anyhow, check out the comments. Great stuff.
Recycled from Wm. Teach
Poll: Fewer Americans worry about global warming
Former Vice President Al Gore's insistence on Monday that global warming was behind a spate of bad weather could fall on some very deaf ears. American's concerns over environmental worries are at the lowest level in two decades, according to a new Gallup poll. "Many environmental issues are at a 20-year-low concern," the poll found.
It also found that public worries over eight green-related issues — from air pollution to the state of rain forests — have dropped by as much as nine percentage points in the last year alone. "Americans worry most about drinking-water pollution and least about global warming," said Gallup analyst Jeffrey Jones.
Indeed, the poll found that half of the respondents worry "a great deal" about the safety and purity of their drinking water; 28 percent said they fretted about global warming. Between the two, 31 percent worry about the extinction of plant and animal species, one-third are concerned about the loss of tropical rain forests, 38 percent are troubled by air pollution and 44 percent fear the pollution of soil and water by toxic waste. Forty-five percent worry about the maintenance of fresh water for "household needs," while 46 percent are concerned about the pollution of rivers, lakes and reservoirs.
The decline in concern is "rather dramatic" in some cases, Mr. Jones said, citing 1989 Gallup figures. At that time, 72 percent of Americans worried about river pollution, while 63 percent were troubled by air pollution. "One major reason Americans may be less worried about environmental problems is that they perceive environmental conditions in the United States to be improving," Mr. Jones said.
The poll found that 46 percent of the respondents now rate the overall quality of the environment in the country as "excellent" or "good," up from 39 percent a year ago. The public's concerns about the economy may have also trumped their environmental worries, the researchers found.
The survey of 1,014 adults was conducted March 4-7.
SOURCE
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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here
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17 March, 2010
What rubbish! Urban CO2 domes claimed to increase deaths
The "researcher" below found that CO2 concentrations in city air were higher than in the country. No surprise. So how to draw some attention to himself with the finding? He couldn't say that CO2 is bad for you as our bodies make it all the time. So he turned to the old standby: CO2 makes the place hotter -- and that is OBVIOUSLY bad. But is it? If so there must be a lot of very ill people in the tropics. I grew up in tropical Australia and I can assure one and all that the tropics are perfectly healthy as long as you have Western public health measures. His claim that heat increases pollution may even be true but so do lots of things that we would not want to be without. And no mention that heat can be beneficial too. Lots more people die in winter than in summer, for instance
Everyone knows that carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas driving climate change, is a global problem. Now a Stanford study has shown it is also a local problem, hurting city dwellers' health much more than rural residents', because of the carbon dioxide "domes" that develop over urban areas. That finding, said researcher Mark Z. Jacobson, exposes a serious oversight in current cap-and-trade proposals for reducing emissions of heat-trapping gases, which make no distinction based on a pollutant's point of origin. The finding also provides the first scientific basis for controlling local carbon dioxide emissions based on their local health impacts.
"Not all carbon dioxide emissions are equal," said Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering. "As in real estate, location matters."
His results also support the case that California presented to the Environmental Protection Agency in March, 2009, asking that the state be allowed to establish its own CO2 emission standards for vehicles.
Jacobson, director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford, testified on behalf of California's waiver application in March, 2009. The waiver had previously been denied, but was reconsidered and granted subsequently. The waiver is currently being challenged in court by industry interests seeking to overturn it.
Jacobson found that domes of increased carbon dioxide concentrations - discovered to form above cities more than a decade ago - cause local temperature increases that in turn increase the amounts of local air pollutants, raising concentrations of health-damaging ground-level ozone, as well as particles in urban air.
In modeling the health impacts for the contiguous 48 states, for California and for the Los Angeles area, he determined an increase in the death rate from air pollution for all three regions compared to what the rate would be if no local carbon dioxide were being emitted. The results of Jacobson's study are presented in a paper published online by Environmental Science and Technology.
The cap-and-trade proposal passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in June 2009 puts a limit on the amount of greenhouse gases that each type of utility, manufacturer or other emitter is allowed to produce. It also puts a price tag on each ton of emissions, which emitters will have to pay to the federal government.
If the bill passes the Senate intact, it will allow emitters to freely trade or sell their allowances among themselves, regardless of where the pollution is emitted. With that logic, the proposal prices a ton of CO2 emitted in the middle of the sparsely populated Great Plains, for example, the same as a ton emitted in Los Angeles, where the population is dense and the air quality already poor.
"The cap-and-trade proposal assumes there is no difference in the impact of carbon dioxide, regardless of where it originates," Jacobson said. "This study contradicts that assumption." "It doesn't mean you can never do something like cap and trade," he added. "It just means that you need to consider where the CO2 emissions are occurring."
Jacobson's study is the first to look at the health impacts of carbon dioxide domes over cities and his results are relevant to future air pollution regulations. Current regulations do not address the local impacts of local carbon dioxide emissions. For example, no regulation considers the local air pollution effects of CO2 that would be emitted by a new natural gas power plant. But those effects should be considered, he said.
"There has been no control of carbon dioxide because it has always been thought that CO2 is a global problem, that it is only its global impacts that might feed back to air pollution," Jacobson said.
In addition to the changes he observed in local air pollutants, Jacobson found that there was increased stability of the air column over a city, which slowed the dispersal of pollutants, further adding to the increased pollutant concentrations.
Jacobson estimated an increase in premature mortality of 50 to 100 deaths per year in California and 300 to 1,000 for the contiguous 48 states. "This study establishes a basis for controlling CO2 based on local health impacts," he said. Current estimates of the annual air pollution-related death toll in the U.S. is 50-100,000.
SOURCE
NWF tries to send overpopulation efforts down memory hole and replace with global warming fears
An interesting email from Michael Potts:
I was looking at the website and articles of the National Wildlife Federation and noticed they seem to have made a concerted effort to wipe out all mention of their previous focus on overpopulation and replace it with a new focus on global warming using some Orwellian memory hole tactics.
Not sure there's a news article in it, but it's very interesting to see how the entire section of their website that was devoted to overpopulation is now all global warming. Rather than re-hash the details here, i've posted a question on Yahoo Answers which has all the relevant links that show their efforts to send the Ehrlichean "population bomb" meme down the memory hole. See here
How did that cooling get massaged away?
By Andrew Bolt
Danish engineer Frank Lansner is curious. Before global warming was fashionable, it was agreed the world has cooled dramatically in the 1940s and 1950s. Here’s how National Geographic in 1976 presented northern hemisphere. temperatures (or go here):
Now that warming is fashionable, that cooling has been “adjusted” into something much less significant, making the warming over the century seem more dramatic:
Lansner:
The original 1976 temperatures from National geographic for 1935-75 shows almost 0,5 degrees Celsius decline. This is why scientists world wide became worried about a coming ice age.JoNova has more:
In 2008 according to CRU (and thus to some extend GHCN) the temperature decline 1935-75 has been reduced to approximately 0,15 degrees Celsius. The decline appears reduced approximately 0,34K
So approximately 70% of the decline in temperatures after 1935-40 has been removed, it seems....
In other words, the need to examine the correctness of the massive corrections to temperature data simply cannot be exaggerated. But most of the global warming movement documentation is built on huge corrections in temperature that are not peer reviewed. Not even made public. So the claim that global warming movement documentation is peer reviewed is to some degree nonsense as long as the crucial underlying basic data are not for the world to see.
If temperature sets across the northern hemisphere were really showing that 1940 was as hot as 2000, that makes it hard to argue that the global warming that occurred from 1975 to 2000 was almost solely due to carbon, since it wasn’t unusual (at least not for half the globe), and didn’t correlate at all with our carbon emissions, the vast majority of which occurred after 1945.
The US records show that the 1930’s were as hot as the 1990’s. And the divergence problem in tree rings is well known. Many tree rings showed a decline after 1960 that didn’t “concur” with the surface records. Perhaps these tree rings agree with the surface records as recorded at the time, rather than as adjusted post hoc? Perhaps the decline in the tree rings that Phil Jones worked to hide was not so much a divergence from reality, but instead was slightly more real than the surface-UHI-cherry-picked-and-poorly-sited records?
MEANWHILE, Dr Roy Spencer uses a new technique to compare the warming measured by rural stations in the US to that measured by urbanising ones, and says adjustments for the urban heat island effect don’t seem to be enough:
This is a very significant result. It suggests the possibility that there has been essentially no warming in the U.S. since the 1970s.
SOURCE
Grandaddy of green, James Lovelock, warms to eco-sceptics
Just occasionally you find yourself at an event where there is a sense of history in the air. So it was the other night at the Royal Society, when a small gathering of luminaries turned up to hear that extraordinary nonagenarian, the scientist James Lovelock.
They had all come: David MacKay, chief scientist at the Department of Energy and Climate Change; Michael Green, Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge; Michael Wilson, producer of the James Bond movies; Chris Rapley, director of the Science Museum; and more. You knew why they had answered the Isaac Newton Institute’s invitation. They wanted to learn where one of the most interesting minds in science stood in the climate debate.
Lovelock has been intimately involved in three of the defining environmental controversies of the past 60 years. He invented an instrument that made it possible to detect the presence of toxic pollutants in the fat of Antarctic penguins — at roughly the same time as Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, her hugely influential book about pollution. In the 1970s the same instrument, his electron capture detector, was used to detect the presence of chlorofluorocarbons — CFCs — in the atmosphere. Although Lovelock mistakenly pronounced these chemicals as no conceivable toxic hazard, the scientists F Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina later won the Nobel prize in chemistry for proving they were destroying the ozone layer.
Then, in 1979, Lovelock published the book-length version of his Gaia theory, which postulates that the Earth functions as a kind of super-organism, with millions of species regulating its temperature. Despite initial scepticism from the Darwinists, who refused to believe that individual organisms could act in harmony, the Gaia theory has been widely accepted and now underlies most atmospheric science.
What, I wondered, would be the great man’s view on the latest twists in the atmospheric story — the Climategate emails and the sloppy science revealed in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)? To my surprise, he immediately professed his admiration for the climate-change sceptics.
“I think you have to accept that the sceptics have kept us sane — some of them, anyway,” he said. “They have been a breath of fresh air. They have kept us from regarding the science of climate change as a religion. It had gone too far that way. There is a role for sceptics in science. They shouldn’t be brushed aside. It is clear that the angel side wasn’t without sin.”
As we were ushered in to dinner, I couldn’t help wrestling with the irony that the so-called “prophet of climate change”, whose Gaia theory is regarded in some quarters as a faith in itself, was actively cheering on those who would knock science from its pedestal.
Lovelock places great emphasis on proof. The climate change projections by the Meteorological Office’s Hadley Centre — a key contributor to the IPCC consensus — should be taken seriously, he said. But he is concerned that the projections are relying on computer models based primarily on atmospheric physics, because models of that kind have let us down before. Similar models, for example, failed to detect the hole in the ozone layer;
it was eventually found by Joe Farman using a spectrometer.
How, asks Lovelock, can we predict the climate 40 years ahead when there is so much that we don’t know? Surely we should base any assumptions on things we can measure, such as a rise in sea levels. After all, surface temperatures go up and down, but the rise in sea levels reflects both melting ice and thermal expansion. The IPCC, he feels, underestimates the extent to which sea levels are rising.
Do mankind’s emissions matter? Yes, they undoubtedly do.
No one should be complacent about the fact that within the next 20 years we’ll have added nearly a trillion tons of carbon to the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. When a geological accident produced a similar carbon rise 55m years ago, it turned up the heat more than 5C. And now? Well, the effect of man-made carbon is unpredictable. Temperatures might go down at first, rather than up, he warns.
How should we be spending our money to prevent possible disaster? In Britain, says Lovelock, we need sea walls and more nuclear power. Heretical stuff, when you consider the vast amount that Europe plans to spend on wind turbines.
“What would you bet will happen this century?” a mathematician asked him. Lovelock predicted a temperature rise in the middle range of current projections — about 1C-2C — which we could live with. Ah, but hadn’t he also said there was a chance that temperature rises could threaten human civilisation within the lifetime of our grandchildren?
He had. In the end, his message was that we should have more respect for uncertainties and learn to live with possibilities rather than striving for the 95% probabilities that climate scientists have been trying to provide. We don’t know what’s going to happen and we don’t know if we can avert disaster — although we should try. His sage advice: enjoy life while you can.
SOURCE
Tomorrow's Forecast: Weather, With a 50% Chance of Climate
By James Taranto
Saturday night found us braving rough weather in New York's Meatpacking District. First the wind ripped our umbrella into pieces, then we got drenched in rain. While waiting to check our coat at the trendy night spot that was our destination, we looked out the door and saw a downpour so intense that it would have been described as biblical had it continued for another 40 days, 39 nights and change.
No wonder the weather was so bad! According to Al Gore, it wasn't just weather, it was climate. As the Business and Media Institute reports:
Gore, the self-anointed climate change alarmist-in-chief, told supporters on a March 15 conference call that severe weather in certain regions of the country could be attributed to carbon in the atmosphere--including the recent rash of rainy weather.But wait. That seems inconsistent with this month-old report from the Hill:
"The odds have shifted toward much larger downpours," Gore said. "And we have seen that happen in the Northeast, we've seen it happen in the Northwest--in both of those regions are among those that scientists have predicted for a long time would begin to experience much larger downpours."
A top Obama administration scientist on Monday struck back at climate skeptics who claim that record snowstorms this winter have undercut evidence of global warming. "It is important that people recognize that weather is not the same thing as climate," said Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.So weather isn't the same thing as climate, except when it is. You can "prove" anything with such heads-I-win-tails-you-lose logic. A decade ago, Gore almost managed to use it to become president.
On a related note, consider this report from London's Guardian:
When Al Gore was caught running up huge energy bills at home at the same time as lecturing on the need to save electricity, it turns out that he was only reverting to "green" type.The Guardian's headline is "How Going Green May Make You Mean." We're inclined to think the chain of causation runs the other way--that people who are jerks to begin with gravitate toward verdant sanctimony.
According to a study, when people feel they have been morally virtuous by saving the planet through their purchases of organic baby food, for example, it leads to the "licensing [of] selfish and morally questionable behaviour", otherwise known as "moral balancing" or "compensatory ethics".
Do Green Products Make Us Better People is published in the latest edition of the journal Psychological Science. Its authors, Canadian psychologists Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong, argue that people who wear what they call the "halo of green consumerism" are less likely to be kind to others, and more likely to cheat and steal. "Virtuous acts can license subsequent asocial and unethical behaviours," they write.
SOURCE
Britain's yellow and not so pleasant land: Freezing winter leaves countryside looking ragged around the edges
England's green and pleasant land is looking a little faded around the edges right now. And the countryside of Wales and Scotland isn't faring much better. After the coldest winter in three decades, huge areas of Britain's pastures, meadows and downs have emerged bedraggled, tired and brown.
The problem is most noticeable in the South West, where normally glorious verdant fields look like they have struggled through a harsh summer drought. In Dorset's Hardy Country, the mighty Maiden Castle, an enormous fort built by ancient Britons, is perched on a murky brown mound. And the centuries old Cerne Abbas Giant - famously carved on a chalk hillside - is barely visible against the yellowing grass.
The phenomenon means dairy farmers will have to feed forage to their cattle until spring arrives and sheep will be eating last year's grass during the lambing season. Farmers believe the seasons are about three weeks later than usual, but they say that when the sun comes out, the colour will return to the fields in days.
Traditional British grasslands usually fade and turn yellow over winter. Unlike the grass varieties used in gardens, they are not hardy enough to survive persistent sub-zero temperatures. But after the mild winters of the last few years, the scale of the brown fields has come as something of a shock. Chris Barber, 45, who farms 35 acres in Martinstown, Dorset, said: 'It happens every year to a degree, but nothing like this. 'It's because we've had such a long spell of cold and the grass wants to grow, but there's no warmth or sun to do so. 'When there is a bit of warmth it will come back quickly with the photosynthesis. 'It's more common this year in the permanent pastures which is unusual. It does mean that during the lambing season the ewes are eating last year's grass. 'We had a good summer last year so there is plenty of food about. I would say we're three weeks later than usual.'
Mike Pullin who farms nearby said: 'The grass is actually a purple-red colour. What happened was the roots became wet and that froze, making the grass dormant. We've had frost and snow for long periods and that means we will be later turning the cattle out.'
Over the last 30 years, spring has arrived earlier and earlier and now typically arrives three weeks sooner than it did in the 1960s. However, this year's cold winter has delayed the first signs of spring, restoring the seasons to their pre-1970s pattern.
SOURCE
Now it's coconut trees that are bad
COCONUT palms may be symbols of the tropics to many, but a scientist says they are damaging the natural environment and may help spread dengue fever. Cape Tribulation Tropical Research Station director Dr Hugh Spencer has spent the past six years studying the impact the palms have had on native beach vegetation.
He has found the thin 50-100m line of forest that lies between the reef and rainforest - called the littoral zone - is constantly under siege from coconut palms, which edge out native trees, pounding them into submission by constantly dumping fronds and fruit on them. Coconuts that are left to rot on the ground collect water, providing perfect breeding grounds for the dengue-carrying mosquito.
To prevent the palms from conquering the beachfront at Cape Tribulation, Dr Spencer and a small group of volunteers have been regularly removing juvenile palms the only way they know - by hand. Where there used to be entire groves, native plants such as pandanus and she-oaks are slowly reclaiming the beach. "We're getting very, very good recruitment of natural vegetation," Dr Spencer said. "We've literally removed thousands of coconuts. We're all volunteers. Nobody gets paid in this place. "It basically means that we are protecting and recovering the most endangered of our forest types."
Cairns Regional Council general manager infrastructure services Ross McKim said the council did not have a policy either. But it did have a duty of care denutting palms to reduce the risk of liability. "Council is aware that the removal of coconut palms can be an emotive issue and actively manage the trees that are featured along the foreshores and parks of the region," Mr McKim said. "Council undertakes denutting and palm frond removal and manage those trees already in place, rather than remove what trees are currently there. "While we are aware that these plants may not be native to Australia, council appreciates these palms play an important part in creating the tropical feel of the region."
Dr Spencer previously took more direct action to eliminate palms from the beachfront by boring holes in a number of palms and poisoning them. The actions angered other locals, who referred to him as a "coconut killer". Dr Spencer said his relationship with his critics appeared to have simmered. "I kind of get the feeling that there is more of a mood of acceptance that they really are a problem," he said. "I get the feeling that is starting to filter though, but I don't have any proof. "I'm not having many people getting their knickers in a twist about coconuts being removed any more."
SOURCE
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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here
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16 March, 2010
Who pays Wikipedia's William M. Connolley?
A kneejerk response towards anyone who challenges the Green/Left is to say that the challenger is "in the pay" of someone -- usually "Big Oil" -- and usually without a scrap of evidence to that effect. The email below from Thomas Lux [beegdawg007@gmail.com], however, suggests that one influential Greenie activist is so busy with his propaganda efforts that it is hard to believe that he has any other job and therefore really COULD be "in the pay" of someone
I did a bit more research into William M. Connolley and others. I'll pass this along.
My interest in this is simply that of a retired engineer who initially believed in the AGW premise. When I was a believer, I did a lot of research into alternative energy issues like solar, wind, wave power etc.. As a civil engineer, I find most alternative energy methods to be of interest, and some even make economic sense. For example, solar hotwater for most homes is now actually quite practical.
However, one day in the fall of 2008, while blissfully engaged in browsing the internet to find new alternative energy methods, I stumbled across an article on the British High Court's rebuke of the Al Gore video "An Inconvenient Truth". I subsequently came across several Lord Monkton articles and my interest in this subject was ignited.
Since than, I have read over 200 articles and papers concerning AGW. Now that I am much better informed, I believe the CO2/AGW hypothesis to be utter nonsense. After recognizing that it is unlikely that a trace gas like CO2 which exists as less than .04% of the environment could cause any climate catastrophe, I started wondering about he political motives surrounding the promotion of such an obviously ridiculous premiss. After all, not all leftist politicians are that dumb, so certainly some of the politicians promoting the AGW theory must realize that it is a seriously flawed view of climate change.
I have reviewed dozens of articles and papers, have read much of the IPCC report, and have followed closely all of the news in regards to AGW and climategate, so I now feel as though I am very up to speed on the AGW fraud which is going on in Europe, America and the U.K.. I do believe that there is a effort to control what the world knows about global warming. I am not sure to what extent governments are involved in this.
After witnessing first-hand the antics of William M. Connolley, Stephan Schultz and KimDabelsteinPetersen, I now believe that a key tactic in this effort is to manipulate what is written in Wikipedia about all that relates to the AGW theory in such a way as to promote the AGW argument. Wikipedia is the most used online encylopedia in the world.
If this is what is going on, and if there is government involvement here, this manipulation of Wikipedia would be should be a story even bigger than Climategate. This would also be a story which should be told because of the fundamental threat that such manipulation of information poses to freedom and democracy.
My primary reason for believing that WMC is being paid for his editing of Wikipedia is this: When one considers the amount of time WMC devotes to editing Wiki articles, doing research to edit Wiki articles, blogging, emailing, writing climate related articles, giving interviews, and "talking" about Wiki articles, there is simply not enough time left for WMC to have another job.
William M. Connolley.. an overview here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_M._Connolley
Following is an article on how Connolley was finally removed as a Wiki Administrator.. SYSOP... for abusing his power by blocking tow posters who disagree with him. Note here that Stephan Schultz attempts to come to WMC rescue when he sides with WMC in the review process.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abd-William_M._Connolley&oldid=315690726
Connolley has his own blog...
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2009/12/i_am_all_powerful_part_2.php
Connolley maintains his own webpage...
http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/
Wiki articles in which WMC participates often end up becoming restricted articles which means that he and only other “experts” can edit the articles. What seems like a restriction for WMC ultimately is a great advantage because other casual observers – even though they may possess subject expertise – are not allowed to edit the Wiki articles which are under restriction until they have proved themselves worthy by meeting time consuming Wikipedia standards for expert editors.
Example of a restricted article as a result of WMCs aggressive editing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Watts_Up_With_That
Example of an article on probation as a result of WMCs aggressive editing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Watts_Up_With_That
Connolley also takes time to provide interviews to the likes of the Huffington Post..
http://scienceblogs.com/channel/politics/?utm_source=globalChannel&utm_medium=link
A simple example of WMC edit designed to slant a Wiki topic toward the AGW believers and away from real science. This edit may seem harmless until you realize WMC and friends edit in this manner roughly 20,000 times a year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Center_for_the_Study_of_Carbon_Dioxide_and_Global_Change&diff=280741263&oldid=280726147
Connolley has edited only 748 times in the past 30 days. He has been editing an average of 1100 times in 30 days. However, wikipedia does not provide any real protection against a person editing using several different monikers so “WMC” could actually now be editing as several different people..
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AActiveUsers&limit=50&username=William+M.+Connolley
Stephan Schultz – a WMC compadre and Wikipedia administrator edits 480 times in past 30 days
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AActiveUsers&limit=50&username=Stephan
KimDabelsteinPetersen – another WMC compadre edits 452 times in past 30 days..
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AActiveUsers&limit=50&username=KimD
These three have averaged 56 edits PER DAY for the past 30 days. Normally, they edit more than 60 times per day. Almost all of the editing for this bunch is for a dozen or so articles which somehow related to the AGW theory. For example, search “global warming”, “climategate”, “CO2 and Climate”, etc.. For anyone with a real job or real normal life, it is virtually impossible to compete with these three self proclaimed arbiters of all things climate related.
SlimVirgin is a fascinating story which provides some clarity on how the manipulation of Wikipedia takes place. Although she was once barred temporarily from editing Wikipedia articles, SlimVirgin is again editing at the rate of nearly 2000 edits per month. Her's is a fascinating story. SlimVirgin is a Cambridge 1984 graduate named Linda Mack. She now goes by the name Sarah McKewan. Pierre Salinger (JFK's press secretary and brother in law) claimed that Linda Mack, a.k.a SlimVirgin was an MI5 agent who was planted in his office following the Lockerbie Scotland plane bombing.
A fascinating story – truly hard to believe! There is so much intrigue surrounding SlimVirgin that it is very easy to believe that she is on someone's payroll also. She appears to be a near brilliant woman who has no apparent source of income and who edits Wikipedia more than 60 times a day.
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/russmag.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AActiveUsers&limit=50&username=SlimVirgin
Judd Bagley, is an expert researcher whom you may want to contact because of the insight he has in regards to SlimVirgin, has been involved with exposing the practice of naked short selling and mob connections to Wall Street. In his research, Bagley comes across a character named Gary Weiss.
GW, a.k.a. Lil GW and mantmorland, is connected to SlimVirgin. It has also been alleged that GW is connected with gangsters and a cabal of extraordinarily powerful hedge fund managers who have, for a decade, manipulated Wall Street And, like SlimVirgin and William M. Connolley, Weiss is a compulsive and prolific writer who seems to bang away at his keyboard 16 hours a day to control what is known about the topic of hedge fund manipulation of Wall Street.
http://antisocialmedia.net/wordbomb-manifesto/
SlimVirgin connections with WMC...
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/cgi-bin/slim.cgi?Na=connolley
A SlimVirgin talk with Stephen Schultz
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/cgi-bin/slim.cgi?Na=stephan
Playing the man and not the ball
As I mentioned immediately above, the global warming "debate" mainly consists of skeptics pointing to scientific facts and Warmists replying with personal abuse and accusations. The Warmist reply is, in other words, almost always an example of an ad hominem fallacy -- one of the classic informal fallacies that one encounters in the study of formal logic. The rough translation of the fallacy into sporting terminology is, "Playing the man and not the ball". In other words, one very rarely gets a survey of the relevant facts from Warmists. Appeals to authority (another informal fallacy) are about the best they can do.
Being a typical scientific skeptic, therefore, I take very little interest in personalities and would never have gone to the trouble to do the analysis above. As it was sent to me by someone else who had done all the work, however, I thought I might as well put it up.
In accordance with that orientation, I do not intend to reproduce or excerpt a recent interview with Marc Morano. I have the highest regard for Marc but just don't think that personalities should be the issue. I might note, however, that Marc does a good job of deflecting all the expected ad hominem accusations directed against him (accusing him of being a "creationist" etc.)
A young German physicist named Jörg Rings was however, much seized by the interview, and did an analysis of it. So was it the science he analysed? No way! He analysed Marc's "tactics" and concludes that they are very clever.
Finally, in the "Comments" section of his post (08:33 of 15.03.10) he observes as follows: "Und - ich werde jetzt nicht Godwins Zorn herabrufen - gewisse historische Figuren waren auch 'extremely clever and dangerous'". That translates as: "I am not going to call down wrath of Godwin - certain historical figures were also 'extremely clever and dangerous'". In other words he compares Marc to Hitler! How's that for an ad hominem argument! It's a classic!
It really is amusing how low Warmists have to stoop in their Kampf (struggle) with reality!
Jim Inhofe slams Al Gore on climate 'hoax'
Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) attacked former Vice President Al Gore on the Senate floor Monday, calling climate change "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people" and claiming that Gore is now "running for cover."
The “hoax” line is an Inhofe standby, but he raised the level of attack on Monday. In front of the backdrop of a blown up Weekly Standard cover featuring Gore, Inhofe railed on the former vice president. "After weeks of the global warming scandal, the world's first climate billionaire is running for cover. Yes, I'm talking about Al Gore," Inhofe charged. "He's under siege these days. The credibility of the IPCC is eroding. The EPA's endangerment finding is collapsing. And belief that global warming is leading to catastrophe is evaporating. Gore seems to be drowning in a sea of his own global warming illusions nevertheless. He's desperately trying to keep global warming alarmism alive today."
Inhofe also floated a political conspiracy theory focused on Gore. He cited a secret “high-level meeting with all [Gore's] global alarmists,” called a recent Gore op-ed in the New York Times a "sure-fire sign of desperation" and compared Gore to an ostrich.
“When it comes to reform and openness and transparency and peer review, and when it comes to practicing good science, Gore stands alone,” Inhofe said. “He wants the world to put its head in the sand and pretend nothing's happening. It reminds me of the two boy ostriches chasing the two girl ostriches. They're chasing them, the one girl ostrich said, 'What do we do? They said, let's hide so each girl ostrich stuck their head in the hole and the boy ostriches gallop up to the clearing and one of them said, 'Where did the girls go?' This is what we're looking at here. They're hiding their head in the sand and Gore's writing this op-ed."
Inhofe spoke for approximately a half hour before yielding the floor. He also mentioned the climate change legislation being worked on by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.), saying that if any form of a cap-and-trade bill passes "people are going to be the losers."
SOURCE
Doctor Of Lies
The Elmer Gantry of global warming (For those who read Sinclair Lewis)
Instead of having his Nobel Prize rescinded for espousing climate fraud, the prophet of doom is set to receive an honorary doctorate of laws and humane letters from the University of Tennessee for his work. 'Vice President Gore's career has been marked by visionary leadership, and his work has quite literally changed our planet for the better," UT Knoxville Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek said in a prepared statement.
We are not making this up, though we will not dispute Gore's having had visions. He has warned us of sea levels rising so high and so fast that we should see boats moored on the top of the Washington Monument. Polar bears would drown en masse for lack of ice at the same time snow measured in feet blanketed large parts of the country.
We used to call it weather. He called it climate change and made a fortune doing so. Revelations that the Fourth Assessment Report produced by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was based on anecdotes, student dissertations and non-peer-reviewed articles in foreign magazines have not dissuaded him. Everybody makes mistakes, Gore says. And channeling Dan Rather's explanation of his bogus claims about President Bush's National Guard service, he says the evidence may be forged but the story is still true.
Confronted with the inconvenient truths such as CRU director Phil Jones admitting there has been no warming trend for at least the last 15 years, Gore monotones: "What is important is that the overwhelming consensus on global warming remains unchanged." He doesn't need no stinking facts.
Well, the seas are not about to swallow us anytime soon, the Himalayan glaciers will not vanish before dinnertime, and the only thing the polar bears have to worry about is overpopulation. We have documented his falsehoods and those of the IPCC and the researchers at Britain's Climatic Research Unit. We have also pointed the money they have made off their climate scams.
According to the Guardian, a British newspaper, Gore has investments in one company that has received more than half a billion dollars in subsidies from the Department of Energy. Financial disclosure documents released before the 2000 election put the Gore family's net worth at $1 million to $2 million. A mere nine years later, estimates are that he is now worth about $100 million. He could become the world's first carbon billionaire.
Gore has not changed the planet for the better. He has pushed policies that have stunted economic growth and increased joblessness, poverty and hunger around the world. He's a climate charlatan, the Elmer Gantry of global warming, and it matters not if his latest undeserved award is printed on recycled paper.
SOURCE
Greenies play dirty on coal, natural gas
They don't discuss the subject too openly outside their own circles, but environmentalists make crystal clear on their Web sites that they want to stop all coal-based power production in this country. They claim coal can never be made clean, so it must be eliminated before it's too late to do anything about global warming. Ted Nace puts it succinctly in a Grist Web site post: "The stakes, for all life on the planet, surpass those of any previous crisis."
That may sound extreme, but Nace is merely expressing mainstream environmentalist thinking. The Sierra Club, for example, tracks the status of all coal-fired power plants in this country on its "Stop the Coal Rush" page. The environmentalists have been remarkably successful in preventing construction of new coal-fired power plants, with 126 having been stopped since 2001, according to the Sierra Club data. And Nace crows that not a single one was started in 2009. Even so, nearly half of all electricity used in the United States is generated by coal-fired power plants, down from a high of 57 percent in 1987.
Regardless of whether one agrees with the goal of eliminating coal-fired power production, it is critically important that policymakers and voters alike understand the duplicitous game being played on them by environmentalists. It is seen most vividly when environmentalists talk about how they plan to replace coal with an array of "green" alternative energy sources, including biomass, solar, wind and ethanol.
What they don't want to talk about is the fact that there's no way those sources are going to replace coal-fired power production by 2030. And they don't want to talk about the fact that there's another extraordinarily plentiful and much cleaner energy source — natural gas — that can readily replace coal and lower energy costs more effectively than any alternative source. In fact, the same environmentalists who are shutting down coal plants are also opposing increased natural gas production. In other words, it's their green way, or nothing.
President Obama and Ken Salazar, his Interior Department secretary, are following right along with the environmentalist playbook on these matters. Salazar recently announced that his department will issue no permits for off-shore natural gas exploration and production before 2012, at the earliest, even though experts agree there are trillions of cubic feet of natural gas waiting to be harvested.
Salazar thus short-circuits the 2008 lifting of presidential and congressional bans on such activities. That means no new off-shore energy development will be approved during Obama's first term in the White House. Meanwhile, Obama is showering billions of tax dollars on alternative energy resources that the Energy Department says won't even be close to replacing coal by 2030.
SOURCE
The CSIRO calls this proof?
By Andrew Bolt, writing from Australia
It’s a bizarre way to “prove” their case:
AUSTRALIA’s two leading scientific agencies will release a report today showing Australia has warmed significantly over the past 50 years, and stating categorically that ‘’climate change is real‘’.Why is this surprisingly scanty propaganda pamphlet bizarre, and not quite honest?
The State of the Climate snapshot, drawn together by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology partly in response to recent attacks on the science underpinning climate change, shows that Australia’s mean temperature has increased 0.7 degrees since 1960. The statement also finds average daily maximum temperatures have increased every decade for the past 50 years.
The report states that temperature observations, among others indicators, ‘’clearly demonstrate climate change is real’’, and says that CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology ‘’will continue to provide observations and research so Australia’s responses are underpinned by clear empirical data’’.
The report also found that the 2000s were Australia’s warmest decade on record; that sea levels rose between 1.5 and three millimetres a year in Australia’s south and east, and between seven and 10 millimetres in the north between 1993 and 2009; and that sea surface temperatures have risen 0.4 degrees since 1960.
First, no one is doubting that “climate change is real”. Climate changes all the time. This is not the debate.
Second, we’re talking about global warming, so why does the CSIRO and BOM’s pamphlet give only Australian temperatures? Is that because it knows that to show world temperatures stayed flat since 2001 actually casts doubt on just how much man’s gases are driving the post-mini-ice-age warming?
Third, given the CSIRO praised the since-discredited An Inconvenient Truth, claiming ”its scientific basis is very sound”, can we really trust its advocacy science?
Fourth, the CSIRO and BOM’s document does not address any of the recent challenges to the processes which produced the concensus that man is almost certainly to blame for most of the recent warming. Nor does it mention recent debate about adjustments made to Australian temperature records of the kind that increase the reported warming trend.
Fifth, what’s most at issue (other than man’s contribution to any warming) is whether any warming will in fact be disastrous, and something we must spend billions to help avert. The record so far of alarmists such as Al Gore, Tim Flannery, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, the IPCC and even the CSIRO itself is that the catastrophism is wildly exaggerated and we might often do better to keep our money in our pockets for the day that we’re called on to cope with whatever happens in the far-off future. But on this, again, this document adds zero to our understanding.
But, of course, this brazenly political document got the unquestioning hero treatment on the ABC’s AM program, in what sounded like the two fingers to its chairman.
UPDATE
How much can this propaganda sheet be trusted to tell you the let-the-cards-fall-where-they-may truth? Judge from this example: "...total rainfall on the Australian continent has been relatively stable"
Stable? Why didn’t the CSIRO and BOM tell the reassuring truth - that total rainfall has in fact increased?
More HERE (See the original for links)
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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here
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15 March, 2010
British government adverts banned for overstating climate change
TWO government advertisements that use nursery rhymes to warn people of the dangers of climate change have been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for exaggerating the potential harm. The adverts, commissioned by Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, used the rhymes to suggest that Britain faces an inevitable increase in storms, floods and heat waves unless greenhouse gas emissions are brought under control.
The ASA has ruled that the claims made in the newspaper adverts were not supported by solid science and has told the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) that they should not be published again. It has also referred a television commercial to the broadcast regulator, Ofcom, for potentially breaching a prohibition on political advertising.
The rulings will be an embarrassment for Miliband, who has tried to portray his policies as firmly science-based. He had commissioned two posters, four press advertisements and a short film for television and cinema, which started appearing in October last year in the run-up to the Copenhagen climate talks. They attracted 939 complaints — more than the ASA received for any advertisement last year. The deluge posed problems for the ASA, which is not a scientific body, so it decided to compare the text of Miliband’s adverts with the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Based on that comparison, it ruled that two of the DECC’s adverts had broken the advertising code on three counts: substantiation, truthfulness and environmental claims. Of the two banned adverts, one depicted three men floating in a bathtub over a flooded British landscape, and the text read: “Rub a dub dub, three men in a tub — a necessary course of action due to flash flooding caused by climate change.” It then explained: “Climate change is happening. Temperature and sea levels are rising. Extreme weather events such as storms, floods and heat waves will become more frequent and intense. If we carry on at this rate, life in 25 years could be very different.”
The second showed two children peering into a stone well amid an arid, post-climate-change landscape. It read: “Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. There was none as extreme weather due to climate change had caused a drought.” It then added: “Extreme weather conditions such as flooding, heat waves and storms will become more frequent and intense.”
It was these additional claims, rather than the nursery rhymes or illustrations, that fell foul of the ASA, which ruled it was not scientifically possible to make such definitive statements about Britain’s future climate. The ASA said: “All statements about future climate were based on modelled predictions, which the IPCC report itself stated still involved uncertainties in the magnitude and timing, as well as regional details, of predicted climate change.” It added that both predictions should have been phrased more tentatively.
The ASA did, however, reject other complaints, including one suggesting the DECC adverts were misleading because they presented human-induced climate change as a fact.
Miliband said: “On the one issue where the ASA did not find in our favour, around one word in our print advertising, the science tells us that it is more than 90% likely that there will be more extreme weather events if we don’t act.”
Greg Barker, shadow minister for climate change, said: “It is so unnecessary to exaggerate the risks of global warming, and also counterproductive.”
SOURCE
Fixing climate change shouldn't cost the Earth
By Bjorn Lomborg
FOR the better part of a decade, I have upset many climate activists by pointing out that there are far better ways to stop global warming than trying to persuade governments to force or bribe citizens into slashing their reliance on fuels that emit carbon dioxide.
What especially bugs my critics is the idea that cutting carbon would cost far more than the problem it is meant to solve.
"How can that be true?" they ask. "We are talking about the end of the world. What could be worse or more costly than that?"
They have a point. If we actually face, as Al Gore recently put it, "an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale preventative measures to protect human civilisation as we know it", then no price would be too high to stop global warming. But are the stakes really that high?
The answer is no. Even the worst-case scenarios proposed by mainstream climate scientists, scenarios that go far beyond what the consensus climate models predict, are not as bad as Gore would have us believe. For example, a sea-level rise of 5m - more than eight times what the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change expects, and more than twice what is probably physically possible - would not deluge all or even most of mankind.
Of course, such a rise would not be a trivial problem. It would affect about 400 million people, force the relocation of 15 million, and imply costly protection of the rest. But it would certainly not mean the end of the world. Estimates show the cost in terms of adaptation would be less than 1 per cent of global GDP. The price of unchecked global warming may be high, but it is not infinite.
According to the best global-warming economic models, every tonne of CO2 we put into the atmosphere will do about $7 worth of damage to the environment. What this means is that we should be prepared to pay an awful lot to stop global warming, but anything more than $7 a tonne would be economically indefensible.
This idea is hard for many to accept. If we have a solution to a serious problem such as global warming, they argue, how can we possibly say that it is too expensive to implement? Well, we do exactly that all the time. There are many potential solutions to serious problems that we do not implement, or that we implement only partially, because the costs associated with them are greater than the benefits.
For example, traffic accidents claim an estimated 1.2 million lives every year. We have the ability to solve this problem, eliminating half a trillion dollars in damages and sparing untold anguish. All we have to do is lower the speed limit everywhere to 5km/h.
Obviously, we will not do this. The benefits of driving moderately fast vastly outweigh the costs. For a variety of reasons, a world moving at only 5km/h would be utterly unacceptable to most of us.
Consider, too, homeland security. On the one hand, the more we spend on anti-terrorism measures (and the more inconvenience we are willing to tolerate), the safer we feel. On the other, even though everyone agrees that a successful terrorist attack is unacceptable, there is a limit to how much we are willing to spend to keep ourselves safe.
Why are we willing to calculate costs and benefits when it comes to traffic safety and terrorism, but not when devising policies to deal with global warming? Perhaps it is because we experience the downside of excessive traffic regulation or security measures every day, while the downside of bad climate policy is more of an abstraction. It shouldn't be, for the risks posed by bad climate policy deserve as much attention as the risks of worse-than-expected climate impacts - maybe more.
Remember how biofuel requirements were supposed to help reduce carbon emissions? In fact, the artificially inflated demand for ethanol and for the corn to manufacture it wound up driving up food prices (which pushed about 30 million poor people into the ranks of the malnourished). It ate up more arable land, which led to the destruction of rainforests and created a situation that will result in more CO2 emissions over the next 100 years.
The biofuel lesson is salutary. If we panic and make the wrong choices in response to global warming, we risk leaving the world's most vulnerable people even worse off. If we are to have a constructive dialogue about the smartest policy responses to global warming, we need to replace our fixation on far-fetched Armageddon scenarios with realism about the true costs of this challenge.
SOURCE
Australia: Establishment scientists accuse climate change sceptics of 'smokescreen of denial'
More assertions -- but "models" instead of facts. You can't model anything as complex as climate. We would have accurate weather forecasts if you could
AUSTRALIA'S leading scientists have hit back at climate change sceptics, accusing them of creating a "smokescreen of denial". The CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology will today release a State of the Climate document, a snapshot of Australia's climate data and trend predictions.
The apolitical science organisations have weighed into the debate as they believe Australians are not being told the correct information about temperatures, rainfall, ocean levels and changes to atmospheric conditions.
The State of the Climate report offers Australians an easy-to-understand snapshot of data. "Modelling results show that it is extremely unlikely that the observed warming is due to natural causes alone," it states. "Evidence of human influence has been detected in ocean warming, sea-level rise, continental-average temperatures, temperature extremes and wind patterns."
CSIRO chief executive Dr Megan Clark said both organisations felt it was time "to give Australians the facts and information they are looking for and to do so in a way that is very transparent and available". "We are seeing a real thirst for knowledge from many Australians and we are responding to that huge public demand. There is a lot of noise out there and a lot of reference to other countries and people want to know what's happening in this country."
Dr Clark said the CSIRO had been observing the impacts of human-induced climate change for many years and had moved on from debate about it happening to planning for the changes to come.
SOURCE
Australia: Families in fear of 'fuel poverty' as energy costs pushed up by Greenie nonsense
SOARING electricity prices will force more working families into "fuel poverty" where they simply cannot afford to pay for power. That is the grim prediction from an energy ombudswoman, who revealed that the number of people fearing they will have their electricity disconnected had surged by a third. In New South Wales alone more than 18,000 households had their power cut off last financial year and, with about $200 added to the average bill last July, that number is only expected to grow.
But the worst pain is expected from increases of up to 62 per cent over the next three years.
The largest retailer, Energy Australia, has an extra 36,000 customers on bill extension or payment plans - 30 per cent more than last year. The second-largest retailer, Integral Energy, has 19,000 more customers in assistance schemes - up 10 per cent.
But the real concern is that more big increases will be too much for many of these households to bear. Clare Petre, NSW Energy and Water Ombudswoman, said yesterday: "We are already receiving complaints from people who can pay now but are worried about their capacity to pay in the future."
Pricing regulator IPART proposed rises of 44-62 per cent over three years to pay for a backlog of network maintenance and the Federal Government's proposed ETS. Ms Petre said these increases could cause "fuel poverty". "It may well, that's our concern, particularly if the [ETS] comes in," she said.
Fuel poverty - a household spending more than 10 per cent of income for an adequate 21C warmth - contributed to nearly 37,000 English and Welsh deaths in 2008-09. In Australia, it isn't the cold, it's the heat. High temperatures were linked to 374 deaths in Victoria last year. IPART said a single aged pensioner would spend 7-12 per cent of income on electricity after the ETS and an average household up to 6 per cent more.
Port Macquarie mum Cassandra O'Meara said she was looking for ways to cut use after her family's power bill went from $500 to $1700 thanks to a new pool and plasma TV. "It's just ridiculous," Mrs O'Meara said of the cost jump yesterday.
SOURCE
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14 March, 2010
New technique shows Roman Warm Period Warmer than Present Day
By Dr. David Whitehouse
A promising new technique to reconstruct past temperatures has been developed by scientists at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada and Durham University, England, using the shells of bivalve mollusks. Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science the scientists say that oxygen isotopes in their shells are a good proxy measurement of temperature and may provide the most detailed record yet of global climate change.
Most measures of palaeoclimate, such as those from tree rings, provide data on only average annual temperatures, and then they are affected by many other factors such as the rainfall effect on tree ring width. William Patterson, lead author of the study, says that as mollusks grow the colder the water, the higher the proportion of the heavy oxygen isotope, oxygen-18 in the shells. Because shell growth depends upon seasonal temperature variations it is possible to see much finer changes than tree rings. Because they only live for between 2 – 9 years it has the potential to reveal fine temporal detail for specific periods.
The study used 26 shells obtained from sediment cores taken from an Icelandic inlet. The shells were extracted along their growth axes and the carbonate powder analysed for stable oxygen isotopes using a mass spectrometer.
Although the mollusks record water temperatures, not air temperatures. But the two are closely linked - especially close to the shore, where most people in Iceland lived.
Oxygen isotope values for the two oldest bivalves in the study show a cold spell between 360 BC to 240 BC that has some of the coldest temperatures in the entire series of observations that stretch to about 1660 AD. Following this period it seems that temperatures increased rapidly such that temperatures from 230 BC are significantly higher. In fact a shell from 130 BC recorded the highest temperature in the entire 2,000-year dataset.
Between 230 BC and 40 AD there was a period of exceptional warmth in Iceland that was coincident with the Roman Warm Period in Europe that ran from 200 BC to 400 AD. This Icelandic shell data series suggests that the RWP had higher temperatures that those recorded in modern times.
By 410 AD there had been a return to cooler temperatures presaging the onset of a cold and wetter era called the Dark Ages Cold Period between 400 AD and 600 AD.
The subsequent warming trend in Iceland took place from 600 AD to 760 AD about a century before prolonged warming began in Europe than in the subsequent centuries led to the Medieval Warm Period that was about as warm as the Roman one.
Iceland was initially settled between 865 AD – 930 AD, and it is often assumed this happened when the climate was favorably warm for sea voyages and settlement. The reconstructed temperatures in this study suggest they were high just before Iceland’s initial settlement began but deteriorated shortly afterwards.
The study's findings suggest that details of climate recorded in Icelandic sagas are reasonably accurate.
In the 1000s the Icelandic “Book of Settlements” reports a famine so severe “men ate foxes and ravens” and “the old and helpless were killed and thrown over cliffs.” According to his shells, it was a difficult period with summer water temperatures peaking at only 5-6 degree C, down from as high as 7.5-9.5 degree C only 100 years earlier.
The high time resolution possible because of the short lives of the clams enables intricate changes to be deduced. A warming trend occurred after 1120 AD however by 1320 AD the climate began cooling again recording record lows for the 2,000 year dataset. Such lows are also seen in Greenland ice cores. The cool period was prolonged. Western settlement in Greenland was abandoned by 1360 AD and by 1450 AD settlements in the east were abandoned as well.
Isotope data from shells is clearly a highly promising technique with many advantages over paleoclimatic reconstruction using tree rings. The ability to monitor seasonal climatic extremes will be very valuable not only for climate but also to shed light on the rise and collapse of societies.
Another crucial aspect of climate science that this research could be important for is the statistical extraction of human climatic "fingerprints" from climate models and real-world data. It is commonly said that one of the most important human fingerprints on the climate is the rapidity of the changes seen in global average temperatures seen in the past few decades. This new line of research has the potential to provide fine temporal resolution of past climatic changes possibly demonstrating similar changes to that seen currently which took place without todays putative anthropogenic forcing. It would be fascinating to see this approach used to produce a detailed timeline of the changes of the past two thousand years from many site worldwide, especially for the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods so that they could properly be compared to what is going on today.
SOURCE
Memorandum submitted by Stephen McIntyre (CRU 32) to the Science and Technology Committee, House of Commons, Parliament, UK
Summary
1. Reconstructions of temperature over the past 1000 years have been an highly visible part of IPCC presentations to the public. CRU has been extremely influential in IPCC reconstructions through: coauthorship, the use of CRU chronologies, peer review and IPCC participation. To my knowledge, there are no 1000-year reconstructions which are truly "independent" of CRU influence. In my opinion, CRU has manipulated and/or withheld data with an effect on the research record. The manipulation includes (but is not limited to) arbitrary adjustment ("bodging"), cherry picking and deletion of adverse data. The problem is deeply rooted in the sense that some forms of data manipulation and withholding are so embedded that the practitioners and peer reviewers in the specialty seem either to no longer notice or are unoffended by the practices. Specialists have fiercely resisted efforts by outside statisticians questioning these practices - the resistance being evident in the Climategate letters. These letters are rich in detail of individual incidents. My submission today will not comment on these individual incidents (some of which I've commented on already at Climate Audit), but to try to place the incidents into context and show why they matter to the research record. I will not comment in this submission on CRUTEM issues only for space reasons.
Introduction
2. Together with Ross McKitrick, I have published several peer-reviewed articles on 1000-year reconstructions and reconstructions, made invited presentations to a panel of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, to a subcommittee of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee and a Union Session of the American Geophysical Union and have in-depth personal knowledge of CRU proxy reconstructions. I was a reviewer of the IPCC 2007 Assessment Report. I am the "editor" of a prominent climate blog, www.climateaudit.org, which analyzes proxy reconstructions. I am discussed in many Climategate Letters.
Temperature Reconstructions
3. Keith Briffa was Lead Author of the IPCC 2007 section on "recent" paleoclimatology, the Climategate Letters showing that he worked closely with Mann associate, Eugene Wahl (not a listed IPCC expert reviewer). Mann was Lead Author of the corresponding IPCC 2001 section, with the Climategate Letters showing that he worked closely with Briffa and Jones.
4. Jones, Briffa and Osborn were on the editorial boards of multiple climate journals and participated actively both in peer review and the assignment of peer reviewers.
5. CRU scientists (and Climategate correspondent Michael Mann) were coauthors of all three reconstructions in the IPCC 2001 report and coauthors of six (of ten) multiproxy reconstructions in the IPCC 2007 report.
6. CRU tree ring proxies (in particular, Tornetrask, Yamal/Polar Urals, Taymir) were used in all ten IPCC 2007 multiproxy reconstructions.
"Bodging"
7. One of the underlying problems in trying to use tree ring width/density chronologies for temperature reconstructions is a decline in 20th century values at many sites - Briffa's 1992 density (MXD) chronology for the influential Tornetrask site is shown at left below. The MXD chronology had a very high correlation to temperature, but went down in the 20th century relative to what it was "expected" to do and relative to the ring width (RW) chronology (which had a lower correlation to temperature.) So Briffa "adjusted" the MXD chronology, by a linear increase to the latter values (middle), thereby reducing the medieval-modern differential. This adjustment was described in private as the "Briffa bodge" (Melvin and Briffa 2008).
8. Although there was no scientific basis for such an arbitrary adjustment, peer reviewers of Briffa et al (1992) did not object. "Bodging" then seems to entered into the CRU toolkit to get reconstructions to "look" right, as evidenced by the Climategate documents containing annotations that the method contains "fudge factors" or "very artificial corrections for decline" (e.g. http://di2.nu/foia/harris-tree/briffa_sep98_e.pro)
;****** APPLIES A VERY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION FOR DECLINE*********
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
9. Although the bodge was reported in the original article, the bodge was not reported in the numerous multiproxy studies relying on the Tornetrask reconstruction nor in the IPCC reports nor was it considered in calculation of confidence intervals.
Withholding Adverse Data
10. There are many incidents in the Climategate Letters of withholding data. I'll review one incident which, in my opinion, has a direct impact on the research record.
11. Briffa et al. (1995) produced an influential chronology from the Polar Urals site (Figure 2- left), which combated the idea of a widespread Medieval Warm Period, supposedly showing a very cold 11th century in Siberia, with 1032 supposedly being the coldest year of the millennium. Further measurements (Figure 2- right) yielded a chronology in which the 11th century was warmer than the 20th century. Neither CRU nor any other climate scientist ever published this update. The data at right has never been publicly archived and was obtained only through quasi-litigation at Science. (One of the Climategate Letters expresses regret that the data was made available.)
12. The failure to publish this data set has two important adverse results. The inconsistency between different tree ring chronologies is disguised. In addition, the data set was unavailable for third parties interested in producing multiproxy reconstructions.
"Cherry-picking"
13. There has been considerable suspicion that CRU cherry-picked the Yamal chronology over the updated Polar Urals chronology or a still unavailable combined chronology attested in Climategate Letter 1146252894.txt.
14. Instead of showing the updated Polar Urals chronology (figure 3-left), Briffa (2000) replaced it without discussion with a chronology from nearby Yamal, one with an extremely pronounced hockey stick shape. This chronology became a mainstay of subsequent multiproxy reconstructions, while the unpublished Polar Urals chronology was ignored. Measurement data for the three Briffa (2000) chronologies - Yamal, Taymir and Tornetrask - was not archived at the international tree ring measurement archive. Briffa resisted requests to archive the measurement data, which was not archived until September 2009 (and then only after Phil Trans B was asked to require its archiving.)
15. Replacement of the Yamal chronology with the Polar Urals chronology alters the ranking of the medieval and modern periods in, for example, the Briffa (2000) composite reconstruction, impacting IPCC assertions in respect to the confidence of their belief in unprecedented modern warmth. As an IPCC reviewer, I requested that this be disclosed. In his capacity as IPCC Lead Author, Briffa refused. In the absence of any explanation of the substitution, there is reason to be concerned about the reasons for using one series rather than the other.
16. The Yamal chronology was very much in the news just before Climategate broke, with questions being asked at Climate Audit about replication and homogeneity, neither of which had been previously addressed in peer reviewed literature.
17. The Climategate Letters (e.g. 878654527.txt) also show evidence that Briffa's concern over non-linear recent growth - a concern that was not disclosed in Briffa (2000).
18. A similar cherry-picking issue arises with the preferential use in multiproxy studies of the Briffa (2000) Tornetrask version in preference to the Grudd (2006) version, which has a medieval period that is relatively "warmer" than the modern period.
19. The above examples show influential CRU site chronologies. However, the number of proxies in a typical IPCC multiproxy reconstruction is sufficiently small that the choice between two versions of a single site chronology can impact the overall reconstruction. For example, Figure 5 compares the published Briffa (2000) reconstruction (left) with a version derived merely by substituting the Polar Urals update for Yamal(right). The medieval-modern differential changes with one seemingly inconsequential change of version.
Figure 5. Briffa (2000) Reconstruction (before fitting to temperature). Left - version from Briffa (2000); right - varying the Tornetrask and Urals versions to newer versions.
The "Trick ... to Hide the Decline"
20. Climate scientists have argued that the term "trick" can denote a clever way "to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion by a technique that has been reviewed by a broad array of peers in the field." (Penn State Inquiry). This is incorrect as applied to representations of the Briffa MXD reconstruction.
21. The "trick" arose in the context of pressure on IPCC 2001 authors to present a "nice tidy story" and to avoid a situation where the Briffa reconstruction "diluted the message" (see http://climateaudit.org/2009/12/10/ipcc-and-the-trick/) . Two different variants of the "trick" appear in contemporary graphics.
22. Figure 6 (left) shows the actual Briffa MXD reconstruction (data available for the first time in the Climategate Letters) and (right) the version in IPCC 2001 Fig 2-21 (digitized on right. The IPCC "trick" was not a "clever" mathematical method - it was merely the deletion of inconvenient data after 1960. Post-1960 values were even deleted in the reconstruction archived version at NOAA[1].
23. The deletion of post-1960 values of the Briffa MXD reconstruction gave the IPCC (2001) temperature reconstructions a rhetorical appearance of consistency that did not exist in the underlying data (as shown below)
24. A somewhat different "trick" was used in the World Meteorological Organization 1999 report (shown in Figure 8 below). Jones substituted instrumental temperatures for MXD reconstruction values after 1960, resulting in an entirely false rhetorical impression of the efficacy of tree ring reconstructions. Far from this technique being "legitimate", Mann himself at realclimate[2] had stated precisely the opposite about the splicing of temperatures and reconstructions into a single graft:
No researchers in this field have ever, to our knowledge, "grafted the thermometer record onto" any reconstruction. It is somewhat disappointing to find this specious claim (which we usually find originating from industry-funded climate disinformation websites) appearing in this forum.
Conduct
25. The Climategate Letters obviously contain many dispiriting examples of poor conduct, including the following.
26. Withholding of data from potential critics:
Jones: We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.[3]
Osborn to Science: I don't have any core measurement data and therefore have none to give out! [4] [Climategate Letters and documents show that CRU had the requested measurement data[5]]
Mann to Osborn: I'm providing these [MBH residuals] for your own personal use, since you're a trusted colleague. So please don't pass this along to others without checking w/ me first. This is the sort of "dirty laundry" one doesn't want to fall into the hands of those who might potentially try to distort things.[6]
27. Use of the peer review process to suppress or delay adverse publications:
If published as is, this paper could really do some damage. It is also an ugly paper to review because it is rather mathematical, with a lot of Box-Jenkins stuff in it. It won't be easy to dismiss out of hand as the math appears to be correct theoretically[7]
Recently rejected two papers (one for JGR and for GRL) from people saying CRU has it wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either appears I will be very surprised[8]
I am really sorry but I have to nag about that review - Confidentially I now need a hard and if required extensive case for rejecting[9]
I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is ! [10]
28. Soft reviews of submissions by close associates. The Climategate documents provide multiple examples of soft reviews of submissions by colleagues Mann[11], Schmidt[12], Santer[13] and Wahl and Ammann[14]. Presumably there are many others. The review of articles in which a reviewer has a personal relationship is a recognized conflict of interest in medical journals. For example, the World Associate of Medical Editors statement[15] says:
a reviewer may have difficulty providing an unbiased review of articles by investigators who have been working colleagues. Similarly, he or she may find it difficult to be unbiased when reviewing the work of competitors
29. The Climategate Letters are replete with examples of unprofessional language, which on occasion rises to defamation:
The important thing is to deny that this has any intellectual credibility whatsoever and, if contacted by any media, to dismiss this for the stunt that it is.[16]
If *others* want to say that their actions represent scientific fraud, intellectual dishonesty, etc. (as I think we all suspect they do), lets let *them* make these charges for us![17]
some cool statement can be made saying we believe the "prats have really fucked up someway" - and that the premature publication of their paper is reprehensible.[18]
I'm saddened to hear that this bozo is bothering you too, in addition to NCAR, NSF, NAS, IPCC and everyone else. Rest assured that I won't ever respond to McIntyre should he ever contact me, but I will forward you any email he sends related to this. I assume Scott feels the same way..
personally, I don't see why you should make any concessions for this moron.[19]
Mr. Fraudit never goes away does he? How often has he been told that we don't have permission? Ho hum. Oh, I heard that fraudit's Santer et al comment got rejected. That'll brighten your day at least a teensy bit?[20]
I noticed that ClimateFraudit had renewed their interest in you. I was thinking about sending an email of sympathy, but I was busy preparing for a quick trip to Hawaii[21]:
I would immediately delete anything you receive from this fraud.[22]
Hi Andy, The McIntyre and McKitrick paper is pure scientific fraud. [23]
I've seen this junk already. Look at the co-authors! DeFrietas, Bob Carter: a couple of frauds.[24]
30. One of the most dispiriting aspects of the Climategate Letters is the evidence of CRU's contribution to the poisoned atmosphere of present climate science. In 2003, CRU criticized us for supposedly not attempting to reconcile differences between our methodology and Mann's methodology. In October 2003, Osborn observed:
The single worst thing about the whole M&M saga is not that they did their study, not that they did things wrong (deliberately or by accident), but that neither they nor the journal took the necessary step of investigating whether the difference between their results and yours could be explained simply by some error or set of errors in their use of the data or in their implementation of your method. [25]
31. Osborn proposed a draft statement, which, had it been accepted by CRU, would probably have prevented much, if not most, of the following controversy:
... we are withholding further comments until we can - by collaboration with M&M if possible - be certain of exactly what changes to data and method were made by M&M, whether these changes can really explain the differences in the results, and eventually which (if any) of these changes can be justified as equally valid (given the various uncertainties that exist) and which are simply errors that invalidate their results.[26]
32. In November 2003, I entered into negotiations with CRU, agreeing to their review of our pending follow-up to our 2003 article, on the condition that CRU agreed to issue a short statement if their review confirmed that we had raised valid concerns:
If you identify any flaws in our document, we will rectify them, and you are at liberty to hold us to public account if we fail to do so....
If you find our document raises valid and meritorious concerns, you will give us a short statement to that effect which we are entitled to publish.
33. In a follow-up email, I re-assured CRU that I did not have the faintest interest in publishing results that were at cross-purposes.
We have entered into discussions about a possible review by UEA/CRU in complete good faith. We do not have the slightest interest in presenting incorrect or defective results or to create debate which is merely at cross-purposes.
34. CRU then refused to carry out the review, choosing to attempt to frustrate us in secret behind the scenes. Jones, as a member of the editorial board of Climatic Change, actively lobbied so that Mann would not be required to disclose source code and supporting data that would have enabled us to reconcile results. Despite his adverse interest, Jones appears (according to a Climategate Letter) to have acted as a reviewer of our 2004 submission to Nature, intervening not to ensure the reconciliation of results proposed by Osborn, but to frustrate any criticism of the Mann reconstruction.
More HERE
The week that was
In spite of recent revelations, the IPCC express is barreling along. There may be some form of inquiry, but will it be significant? The engineers and conductors are assuring the passengers they will do better next time. Some passengers are leaving, disturbed by issues such as the non-existent melt of the Himalayas, disappearance of the relationship between storm damage and warming, unfounded claims of elimination of fifty percent of rain-based agriculture in Africa and forty percent of the Amazon rainforest.
However the passengers in first class continue to insist that these are minor inconveniences and the main line is solid and clear. They ignore the three great train wrecks ahead – the datasets of NOAA-NCDC, NASA-GISS, and Hadley-CRU.
As stated in the Summary for Policymakers, the claim that it is at least ninety percent probable that humans caused the warming in the last half of the 20th Century is based on several assumptions. One: temperature trends are accurately determined; and two: the natural causes of temperature change are known.
Of course, this methodology requires rigorously maintained measurements of temperature. As discussed in the science editorial below, these datasets are doubtful and before any policy on global warming is adapted, they must be verified. The second requirement of this methodology, complete knowledge of the natural causes of temperature change, will be discussed in next week’s TWTW.
As partially described in the Nature editorial reproduced below and in referenced articles, climate alarmists are claiming they are victims suffering from abuse by skeptics. Certainly ad hominem attacks have no place in science, but many of today’s “victims” had no issue with ad hominem when they were the perpetrators.
This leads to a somewhat amusing incident. On March 3, the web site of Scientific American posted a story on the satellite, Mars Express, fly by of the one of the moons of Mars, Phobos. The story was entitled “Probe flies by ‘alien space station.’” The author claimed that Fred Singer told President Eisenhower that the moon “might be an ancient abandoned spacecraft.” Of course, this was a complete fabrication and to their credit, when informed, the editors took down the posted article with apologizes and a statement it was not done by their staff. However, there was no explanation of who was responsible.
More disturbing news is that the EPA is up to its old tricks of manipulating the court system to expand power at the exclusion of the public, the legislative process, and those most impacted by such expansion of power. According to the AP, EPA announced a legal settlement with the Center for Biological Diversity. The EPA is sued by the friendly special interest group demanding EPA must expand its powers to deal with a perceived, though often spurious harm, and then reaches a settlement which is sanctified by the courts. The EPA will promulgate more regulations, in this instance, considering “ways the states can address rising acidity levels in oceans, which pose a serious threat to shellfish and other marine life.” The claim is that increased atmosphere carbon dioxide is responsible for the rising ocean acidity.
In his book heaven+earth, geologist Ian Plimer points out the science is a sham. The oceans are a base with a pH between 7.9 and 8.2. They have remained that way millions of years even when volcanoes greatly increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere many times beyond what it is today without any change in ocean pH. Even the terminology is scientifically incorrect, since the oceans are alkaline; the issue should be “reducing ocean alkalinity,” not increasing acidity. But reducing alkalinity would not have the same emotional appeal.
Of course, there will be a public hearing process on the rules, but as demonstrated in its endangerment finding, EPA will claim it is required to do so by the courts, and will ignore the science. As long as the courts defer to the EPA for scientific expertise, the public is not safe.
The AP article and a review of the experimental science by Sherwood, Keith, and Craig Idso are referenced below.
On another note, in a past issue TWTW pointed out there no scientific basis for EPA to intensify its regulations on ozone and it is likely that the new regulations will be economically harmful. The public comment period will close on March 22. For further information please see here
Roy Spencer has posted the satellite temperature measurements for February. Due to the El Niño occurring in the Pacific, as with January, February is above the norm. Roy also is applying a new technique to estimate the Urban Heat Island effect. See here.
SOURCE
ClimateGate (CG) and other’Gates’ undermine the credibility of the IPCC and of AGW
By S. Fred Singer, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project
If I were to submit comments to the British House of Commons panel on Climategate, I would focus on the science:
1. We have yet to discover just how Jones et al managed to produce a substantial surface warming [between 1979 and 1997] when satellites showed practically none in the troposphere -- in conflict with all GH models.
2. I suspect that it had to do both with the SELECTION of weather stations and with the applied CORRECTIONS to the trends
3. Further, I had noticed that the Mann analysis of proxy data [Nature 1998] conveniently stops in 1979. When I questioned him on this matter, I got the very unsatisfactory reply that there were no suitable data available -- suggesting to me that he was hiding such information.
4. Accordingly, one needs to procure and analyze post-1980 proxy data to see if they support CRU (and NCDC and GISS) or the MSU satellite results.
SCIENCE EDITORIAL #8-2010 (March 13, 2010)
IPCC Rainforest eco-tastrophe claim confirmed as bunk
Official UN website still shows it as fact, though
More bad news today for the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as another of its extravangant ecopocalypse predictions, sourced from green campaigners, has been confirmed as bunk by scientists.
The UN body came under attack earlier this year for suggesting that 40 per cent of the Amazonian rainforests - dubbed the "lungs of the planet" by some for their ability to turn CO2 into oxygen, and also seen as vital on biodiversity grounds - might disappear imminently. This disaster would be triggered, according to the IPCC's assessment, by a relatively slight drop in rainfall of the sort to be expected in a warming world.
Unfortunately it now appears that just such conditions have already occurred, and in fact the Amazonian jungles were unaffected.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the baseless IPCC projection originated in a study produced in 2000 by hard-green* ecological campaigning group WWF, which was also implicated in the IPCC's equally invalid prediction that the glaciers of the Himalayas will all have melted within a generation from now.
According to the WWF report (pdf), which was not subject to scientific peer review - it was written by a freelance journalist and published by WWF itself - drying-up of forests will lead to runaway wildfires that will destroy the jungle and perhaps the entire planetary ecosystem. The document is full of terrifying phrases such as "the year the world caught fire". It warns of imminent doom caused by drought cycles:
The world faces a positive feedback cycle in which climate change, exacerbated by forest fires and deforestation, increases the frequency of the El Niño phenomenon, which in turn causes more forest burning.It was bad enough that the IPCC included this sort of speculative scaremongering in its 2007 Fourth Assessment Report. But now it has been conclusively disproven - so much so that even IPCC members pour scorn on it, though they haven't retracted or amended their original endorsement of it.
The world faces warmer more violent weather, and more forest fires ... scientists believe the whole Amazon itself is threatened, with the rainforest being replaced by fire-prone vegetation. This has global consequences ...
NASA-funded scientists analysing the past decades of satellite imagery of the Amazon basin say that in fact the rainforests are remarkably resilient to droughts. Even during the hundred-year-peak dry season of 2005 the jungles were basically unaffected.
"We found no big differences in the greenness level of these forests between drought and non-drought years," says Arindam Samanta of Boston university, lead author of the new study based on NASA's MODIS sat data. "Our results certainly do not indicate such extreme sensitivity to reductions in rainfall," adds Sangram Ganguly of the NASA-affiliated Bay Area Environmental Research Institute, another study author.
Even the IPCC itself now regrets listening to WWF.
"The way that the WWF report calculated this 40 per cent was totally wrong," according to IPCC member Jose Marengo, commenting on the new research.
Which might beg the question of why his colleagues referenced the bogus WWF polemic in their 2007 report on what the world can expect: and why they still publish it today on the web as part of their considered opinion.
Samanta, Ganguly and their colleagues also consider that their results debunk another controversial paper published in 2007, which said that the 2005 drought was actually good for the rainforests, causing them to "green up" due to more sunlight from cloudless skies. These results are "not reproducible", according to the new analysis, which indicates that in fact nothing much changed down on the Amazon during the 2005 dry spell.
Samanta, Ganguly et al's paper, Amazon forests did not green-up during the 2005 drought, is published in Geophysical Research Letters (subscriber link).
Bootnote
*It's WWF's position, for instance, that economic growth is evil and will destroy the planet. We should actually be praying for a prolonged and massive recession with no recovery afterwards.
The organisation started out as a fairly mainstream outfit intended to protect wildlife, but has nowadays widened its remit into protecting the entire planet from unsuitable human activities. The initials WWF no longer stand for anything in particular.
SOURCE
Americans' Global Warming Concerns Continue to Drop
Multiple indicators show less concern, more feelings that global warming is exaggerated
Gallup's annual update on Americans' attitudes toward the environment shows a public that over the last two years has become less worried about the threat of global warming, less convinced that its effects are already happening, and more likely to believe that scientists themselves are uncertain about its occurrence. In response to one key question, 48% of Americans now believe that the seriousness of global warming is generally exaggerated, up from 41% in 2009 and 31% in 1997, when Gallup first asked the question.
These results are based on the annual Gallup Social Series Environment poll, conducted March 4-7 of this year. The survey results show that the reversal in Americans' concerns about global warming that began last year has continued in 2010 -- in some cases reverting to the levels recorded when Gallup began tracking global warming measures more than a decade ago.
For example, the percentage of Americans who now say reports of global warming are generally exaggerated is by a significant margin the highest such reading in the 13-year history of asking the question. In 1997, 31% said global warming's effects had been exaggerated; last year, 41% said the same, and this year the number is 48%.
Fewer Americans Think Effects of Global Warming Are Occurring: "In a sharp turnaround from what Gallup found as recently as three years ago, Americans are now almost evenly split in their views of the cause of increases in the Earth's temperature over the last century."
Many global warming activists have used film and photos of melting ice caps and glaciers, and the expanding reach of deserts, to drive home their point that global warming is already having alarming effects on the earth. While these efforts may have borne fruit over much of the 2000s, during the last two years, Americans' convictions about global warming's effects have waned.
A majority of Americans still agree that global warming is real, as 53% say the effects of the problem have already begun or will do so in a few years. That percentage is dwindling, however. The average American is now less convinced than at any time since 1997 that global warming's effects have already begun or will begin shortly.
Meanwhile, 35% say that the effects of global warming either will never happen (19%) or will not happen in their lifetimes (16%). The 19% figure is more than double the number who held this view in 1997.
More HERE
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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here
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13 March, 2010
ARE WE READY TO PAY A TAX ON LIFE?
All this was inspired by the principle-which is quite true in itself-that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.
Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. -Adolf Hitler , Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X[1]
Currently in the mainstream media there is a constant barrage of repetition concerning the issue of human emissions of carbon dioxide. You cannot open a newspaper or turn on the radio without being told how we must reduce our carbon footprint and do our bit for the environment. Terms such as Man Made Global Warming, Greenhouse Effect and more recently, Climate Change have cast a shadow of gloom over our very existence. A mass global guilt trip has been successfully laid on the ordinary people of the world which makes even the Catholic Church look like part-timers.
It has been said by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that the debate is over. That we humans are responsible for a rise in CO2 over the last 150-200 years or more taking levels from 280 ppm (parts per million) up to 385 ppm. It is also claimed that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and causes global warming because it traps heat from the Sun. And that because of our CO2 emissions, the temperature on Earth is set to go on rising until the polar ice caps melt and the sea levels rise, swamping coastal towns and villages and displacing millions of people.
In fact such catastrophic predictions have been so numerous that CO2 levels have been increased by the very act of their verbalisation. Most worrying is the fact that there are currently, very real efforts underway to curb our carbon emissions and force us to pay a premium for the right to emit carbon dioxide based on these claims which, it has to be said, although the debate is apparently over, have yet to be substantiated.
The reason that so many people have accepted that they are to blame, regardless of the fact that these claims remain unsubstantiated, is simple. To be told that you are responsible for harming the very environment on which you depend for life is enough to fill you with the utmost fear, unbearable guilt and sheer terror. Therein lies the problem. When we are in a state of fear or shock or we feel a sense of intense guilt we lose the ability to think properly. Rational and logical thought is shut down to a point where we cease to even question what we are told.
With regard to these claims about human emissions of CO2 I have remained resolutely unconvinced. This has freed my mind of the fear and guilt associated with such claims, currently affecting millions worldwide, and has enabled me to ask a few pertinent questions which I among many others feel need answering in order to establish the truth about such claims.
Not least of all, can these claims be tested? By which I mean that if a claim is made to the effect that CO2 traps heat for instance, can this claim be tested? The answer of course is yes it can.
The purpose of this book then is to address these claims or rather accusations against us with regards our CO2 emissions with a rational, logical, guilt-free and above all, questioning mind.
I have for as long as I can recall been aware that carbon dioxide is a kind of plant food. It is used in commercial greenhouses all over the world to increase yields. If as the IPCC claim CO2 levels are becoming dangerously high because of human emissions, first we must ask, are we obliged to take the IPCC at their word? Second we need to know what current levels are and how do they compare with historical levels. Third and most importantly we must ask what CO2 levels represent a benefit to the environment and how high can levels be before they produce a detrimental effect.
Since the answer to the first question is a resounding NO, then we must also apply this questioning to all the other claims of the IPCC and the anthropogenic global warming lobby, or to put it another way, "Always, without exception, question authority."
So what is all the fuss about CO2 and what does that have to do with us? The accusations are twofold. First, that human CO2 emissions are responsible for a 100 parts per million overall rise globally during the last 200 years. Second that CO2 harms the environment because it traps in heat causing global warming. These are the claims being made against we humans and the purpose of this book is to address these accusations and to clear up any ambiguity.
I shall begin by looking first at CO2 levels and some of the data on which the accusations are based. Then I shall look at CO2 itself and question whether it or any other material or substance for that matter, has the ability to trap heat or cause a "Greenhouse Effect" and thus, "Global Warming".
What are the current levels of CO2 and what is the total human carbon footprint? Strangely, considering the enormity of the implications, there are only two sources of data being considered as the basis for claimed levels of atmospheric CO2 content. Even more telling is that the data being relied on is not in the least supported by the many other available sources of evidence for atmospheric CO2 content such as tree rings, lake sediments, stalagmite formation and chemical gas analysis, all of which have been dismissed as irrelevant by the IPCC.
The first source are samples from ice cores obtained from various glaciers which apparently represent atmospheric gas content for the last 200 years. Ice core samples however, like those who collect them, are not particularly reliable. Ice core data is highly imprecise at best and according to some scientists such as Zbigniew Jaworowski, Ph.D. in his paper: IceCoreSprg97.pdf, at worst, a blatant cherry picking exercise.
Above all, the Earth is over 4.5 billion years old so obtaining any definitive information regarding specific atmospheric CO2 levels over such a miniscule time frame as 200+ years is not only meaningless but unsurprisingly, the subject of much debate. After all CO2 levels have fluctuated up and down by thousands of parts per million for billions of years so obviously we can understand nothing whatsoever by looking at a 200 year period.
Even so, we are expected to be willing to undergo evolutionary reversal based on unreliable, unsubstantiated and highly insignificant data. The only other source of data being relied upon for CO2 levels comes from spectrophotometric measurements at Mauna Loa, a volcano in Hawaii. Mauna Loa is not just any old volcano. It happens to be the largest and one of the most active volcanos in the world. Consequently it will itself, no doubt, be producing large amounts of CO2. Yet we are told that these measurements at Mauna Loa agree with those at other locations.
It is worth mentioning that CO2 measurements have only been collected at this location for a mere 50 years. However from this scant and highly dubious data it is stated that CO2 levels have been steady at 280 parts per million for hundreds of thousands of years but due to human emissions and in particular the industrial revolution, during the last 200 years levels have risen by more than 100 ppm to 385 parts per million.
All the same, lets be generous and give the proponents of anthropogenic global warming the benefit of the doubt. For the moment, lets accept that the figure of a 100 ppm rise in CO2 over the last 200 years is accurate. All that the AGW proponents need do then, is show that we humans are responsible for this increase and that it poses a significant threat. But since no one has ever attempted to record the carbon dioxide usage or production of every plant, animal and natural process involved in the carbon cycle, this cannot even be quantified, let alone proven.
All that is known, is that there are huge exchanges of CO2 between the atmosphere and the surfaces of the oceans, the land, organic matter and the large numbers of organisms. The approximate annual human contribution to the overall atmospheric CO2 content is apparently about 8 billion (some say six billion) tons per year. Humans emit approximately 8 billion tons of CO2 per year.
It sounds like a lot doesn't it? But if we compare that to the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere we can put that figure into perspective. Approximately 8 gigatons is the total human annual output of CO2. It is said that the atmosphere contains an average of about 750 gigatons of CO2 which is roughly 385 ppm. (parts per million) 8 gigatons into 750 gigatons = 93.75 385 ppm ö 93.75 = 4.1066666666666665 ppm.
So assuming these figures are correct, our annual contribution of CO2 to the total average of 385 ppm is at most, a fraction over 4.1 parts per million. 4.1 ppm is the entire annual CARBON FOOTPRINT of the whole of the human race. That means that if all 6.8 billion of us reverted to a state before the discovery of fire we could reduce atmospheric CO2 by a staggering 4.1 ppm per year, out of a claimed total average of 385 ppm.
Let me say that again. Even if all 6.8 billion humans on Earth gave up ALL forms of transportation, ALL forms of industrial activity, ALL forms of energy production and even reverted back to a Stone Age state before the discovery of fire, living in cold damp caves as hunter gatherers and eating raw food, bearing in mind that most of us would die of starvation and/or hypothermia, we could only reduce overall atmospheric CO2 content by about 4.1 parts per million per year against a supposed average background level of 385 ppm.
That is assuming of course that all anthropogenic CO2 ends up in the atmosphere and remains there for a significant length of time. So what does this figure 4.1 ppm really mean? Is 8 billion tons significant or not? It is estimated that each year the surface oceans and the atmosphere exchange 90 billion tons of CO2. Vegetation and the atmosphere, 100 billion tons, marine biota and the surface oceans, 50 billion tons and the surface oceans and the intermediate and deep oceans as much as 40 billion tons of CO2.
It is important to point out that this data is not precisely known and these annual numbers are very rough estimations but they show clearly, just how insignificant the 8 billion tons from human activity each year, really is. The effect of variability in these figures by itself, is enough to swallow without a trace, the so called Anthropogenic contribution to CO2.
To put it another way, our total annual output may be 4.1 ppm, but the estimated annual CO2 exchange rate between the surface oceans, the vegetation and the atmosphere alone, is well over 100 ppm (ignoring the fluctuation of these levels). Considering this figure is estimated and variable, are we to believe that the difference, if corrected up or down to account for that variation, would be less than 3 or 4 ppm per year?
Of course, these estimated numbers ignore completely the many other factors which need to be considered when looking at the effect of Carbon Dioxide and the role it plays in the environment, not least of all the way plants themselves behave in the presence of higher levels of CO2.
It is well known that in an environment which has increased CO2 levels, plant growth is much more vigorous, doubling and even quadrupling crop yields. For instance, in a commercial greenhouse the CO2 level strived for is usually 1200+ ppm. This is known as Threefold Enrichment, three times normal atmospheric levels. These larger plants are then going to cause a negative "feedback loop" on atmospheric CO2 content as their larger size then in turn requires even more CO2. Thus placing further demands on atmospheric levels. This poses the question, if CO2 is increasing for other more credible reasons such as naturally warming oceans for example, what might happen to CO2 levels when this current warming ends but the demand from these larger plants still persists?
During daylight hours plants are using CO2 and producing Oxygen in the process know as photosynthesis. The peak of that usage is when the Sun is at its strongest, at around noon. At night however this process is reversed and instead of using CO2, plants are using Oxygen and producing CO2. During each 24 hour period, as the light from the Sun moves east to west across the Earths surface, CO2 and Oxygen are being used up and reproduced like a giant Mexican wave (in terms of gasses), creating massive variations in CO2 and Oxygen levels.
At the same time that this is happening, great areas of the oceans are also being warmed by the Sun causing the release of yet more CO2. It is clear then that at no point during any 24 hour period do CO2 levels remain constant let alone month to month or year to year. This daily rate of change in terms of parts per million, as said, completely negates the annual 4.1 ppm total human CO2 contribution.
Is it any wonder that this figure of 4.1 ppm is never mentioned in the mainstream media? Who in their right mind would believe that 4.1 ppm per year can affect global CO2 levels which can fluctuate by more than 10-20+ times that in a single day regardless of human activity?
Much more HERE. (PDF. See the original for links, graphics etc. -- and forgive the spelling. I have fixed the spelling in the excerpt above. The author is obviously a scientist rather than a liberal arts graduate)
If only the weather were as predictable as the alarmists
It seems that a group of US warming alarmists have been emailing one another discussing an offensive against those nasty people who question their theory. I was looking at those emails and one of them, apparently from David Schindler says: "I'd add that Edmonton is near snowless and has been shirtsleeve weather for most of 2010 instead of the usual -40C... but of course there are no major media here, so only the locals know!"
Unlike most global warming theory, which is based on models projecting into the future what the theorists think will happen, given the assumptions they make, this claim is easily verified in the here and now. So I did. First, I wondered if the "usual" temperature in Edmonton is -40C, as the author claimed.
According to the BBC the average minimum temperature in Edmonton, for January, is -20 and the average high is -9. For February it is -17 and -6 respectively. The record low is -50, so it appears that -40C is not usual at all, but would be highly unusual. I went to the Canadian Weather Office for more official data. They say the daily average in January, in Edmonton, is -11.7, not -40 as Schindler claimed in his email. For February, the weather office says the average is -8.4. They say the January "extreme minimum" was -44.4, set in 1943 and for February the extreme minimum was -46.1, set in 1939.
The record lows for Edmonton are barely colder than what Schindler claimed is the "usual" weather in Edmonton. The official data shows the "usual" weather is nowhere near -40C, either an a daily average, or as the daily low. Temperatures of -40 are not "usual."
What about Edmonton having "shirtsleeve" weather this year? Since Schindler said this was "for most of 2010" and since he wrote the email on February 27th, it is fair to look at average temperatures for January and February in Edmonton. Obviously there is no objective definition of "shirtsleeve weather," so that is more ambiguous than the now-debunked claim that the usual temperature is -40C. But I sincerely doubt anyone reading this would actually define the weather in Edmonton, this year, as shirtsleeve weather. I would dare Prof. Schindler to spend much time outside, in his shirtsleeves, during even the warmest of the days this year in Edmonton. At best there were a few hours that might qualify as "shirtsleeze" weather. A few hours over 58 days is not "most of 2010."
For the last third of January the temperature never got higher than -5.1C (yes that is negative) and the minimum temperature went down t0 -21.5C. Here is the maximum temperature, per day, for February: 1st, -6.4C; 2nd, -7.4C; 3rd, -4.7C; 4th, -6.6C; 5th, -8.9C; 6th, -6.7C; 7th, -5.9C; 8th, -5.6C; 9th, -2.4C; 1oth, 1.7C; 11th, -1.7C; 12th, -8.6C; 13th, -14.6C; 14th, -6.1C; 15th, 4.8C; 16th, 1C; 17th, 2.3C; 18th, 2; 19th,-2.4C; 20th, -6.3C; 21st, 0.4C; 22nd -5.1C; 23rd, -5.1C; 24th, 4.2C; 25th, 5.5C; 26th, 7.3C; 27th, 0.6. I end with the day of Schindler's email since he was referring to the weather to that date.
Considering that when Schindler made his claim, there had been only 58 days in 2010, it certainly was easy to check how accurate he was. He said that "most of 2010," as of that day, had been shirtsleeve weather. The official data shows the average day to be below freezing. Only a few days crept above freezing and just a handful had highs in the 40s (F). Even defining "shirtsleeve weather" very broadly it is impossible to say that "most of 2010" was "shirtsleeve weather." Mr. Schindler grossly exaggerated the warming.
I have also looked at his other claim, that the "usual" temperature in Edmonton is -40C. I don't know if "usual" is supposed to be the mean temperature or the usual low temperature. Normally I would take his comment as referring to the usual mean temperature. Unfortunately for him, neither would substantiate his claim. The most favorable interpretation would be to say he meant the mean low temperature for those months. But that is still far off the mark since the mean couldn't be that close to the record low. For the record, the mean temperature for Janaury, 2010 in Edmonton was -12; for February it was -8. In addition to exaggerating Edmonton's "warm" weather, Schindler grossly exaggerated it's "usual" cold weather as well. This seems par for the course with the alarmists, hence the designation "alarmist."
Perhaps Mr. Schindler thought he could get away with it because, as he said, "there are no major media here." Unfortunately for him, there is weather data available. Of course, that is before they "adjust" the data with unknown formulas in their climate models. No doubt when they finish that process Edmonton will have had the "warmest" winter in recent memory.
But, doesn't Mr. Schindler's claim—even if it were true—confuse weather with climate? After all, we constantly hear that record colds don't disprove warming theory since the one is weather, and the theory is about climate. Of course, when we have extraordinarily warm days the warming alarmists bleat about it constantly. So apparently the "weather isn't climate" slogan only applies to weather that contradicts their theory, not weather that is alleged to confirm it. As far as I know, all weather, of whatever kind, for however long, is considered proof of warming. I've yet to find out what the alarmists say would falsify their theory.
I also note, with some amusement, that one of the prominent names among the emailers about countering the evil skeptics was Paul Ehrlich. Ehrlich is certainly an alarmist, if ever there was one. His history of unsubstantiated looming disasters are well known. And, again par for the course, his solutions were always massive government control of individuals. His first alarmist work was The Population Bomb, which said: "By 1985 enough millions will have died to reduce the earth's population to some acceptable level, like 1.5 billion people." He predicted a massive famine in America with populations plunging to around 2.6 million by 1999. (Yep, still waiting for that one as well.) He predicted the oceans wouldbe destroyed by 1979 and said: "If I were a gambler, I would tekae even money that Engliand will not exist in the year 2000." If anyone deserves the lable "alarmist" it is Ehrlich. I know of no prominent left-wing environmentalist who has been as hysterical, on as broad range of topics as Ehrlich. I should also note that I can't think of anyone in the field of public academia who has been so consistently wrong either.
Given Ehrlich's history of paranoid alarmism I'm not suprised he is now in a warming alarmist. Given his track record, when it comes to being right, I find his presence in the warming camp actually rather assuring.
SOURCE
EPA gets on the ocean acidity bandwagon
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday it will consider ways the states can address rising acidity levels in oceans, which pose a serious threat to shellfish and other marine life. The agency's decision was announced in a legal settlement with the Center for Biological Diversity. The environmental group sued the EPA last year for not requiring Washington state to list its coastal waters as impaired by rising acidity under the Clean Water Act. Such a listing would have
"It's one of the most important threats to water quality right now," said Miyoko Sakashita, a senior attorney at the group's San Francisco office. "It's affecting waters around the world, and it's particularly stark in the waters off the West Coast." Oceans are becoming more acidic as they absorb excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere — a problem Sakashita referred to as "global warming's evil twin."
The changing chemistry of the waters affects many types of sea life, but especially anything that grows a shell or hard covering. Some scientists believe it is likely to blame for die-offs in Northwest oyster stocks over the past several years. "Protection of the nation's water quality, including the health of our ocean waters, is among EPA's highest priorities," the agency said in a statement. "EPA is interested in learning more about how to protect our ocean and coastal waters from acidification."
Previously, states have taken steps to address rising acidity levels in lakes and streams under the Clean Water Act, but this is the first time the EPA has agreed to consider ocean acidity. The Center for Biological Diversity is petitioning each coastal state to address the issue, Sakashita.
In the settlement agreement, the EPA said it would take public comment on the increasing acidity of oceans, on ways states can determine if their coastal waters are affected, and on how states can limit pollutants that cause the problem. Such measures could include regional cap-and-trade systems to limit carbon-dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels or requiring industrial plants to reduce their emissions as a condition of any discharge permits granted under the Clean Water Act, Sakashita said.
She compared it to the way the states have used the Clean Water Act in the past to regulate mercury emissions and acid rain. The problem is global, she said, but any steps toward reducing emissions help. "It would be complementary to any other types of climate solutions we have out there," she said.
The American Petroleum Institute, which represents hundreds of oil and gas companies, sought unsuccessfully to intervene in the lawsuit. It claimed that its members have refineries in Washington state whose permits under the Clean Water Act to discharge wastewater off Washington's coast could be affected by the lawsuit's outcome.
"API is now reviewing the settlement and looks forward to seeing EPA's notice for comments on the ocean listings issue," spokesman Bill Bush said in an e-mail.
SOURCE
Lord Rees, President of Royal Society criticized for ‘surrender to politically driven Climate Change dogma’
The feeble defence today (BBC Radio4*) of the failed science of Man-made climate change by Lord Martin Rees President of the Royal Society is a “dereliction of his duty to defend the integrity of science and a surrender to the politically driven agenda of the UN which is mounting a ‘Custer’s last stand’ review of IPCC procedures in a desperate bid to save its credibility”, said Piers Corbyn astrophysicist and founder of WeatherAction long range weather and climate forecasters.
Piers further said: “Martin Rees is a great scientist but his support today of failed science over evidence-based factual observations is a betrayal of the scientific method in favour of anti-scientific dogma. One wonders at what point should political expediency ever over-rule evidence-based science?”
“His defence of the refuted** theory of man-made climate change on the grounds that ‘CO2 has been rising recently at an unprecedented rate and very simple physics’ is without foundation.
“Firstly the claim that current rates of rise of CO2 are unprecedented is neither relevant nor justifiable. Recognized published peer-reviewed work shows:
(i) measured data over hundreds, or thousands, or millions of years proves CO2 changes have no nett driving effect on world temperature or climate, indeed the relationship is observed to be the other way around – for example at the end of ice-ages temperature rises drive CO2 rises with a lag of centuries.
This means that current changes of CO2 are also of no consequence. This is demonstrated by world cooling for the last 8 years while CO2 has been rapidly rising.
(ii) ice core data smooths out rapid fluctuations in CO2 levels which occurred in the past and other methods of measuring CO2 in more recent times show rapid changes**.
The claim of unprecedented rises in something of no consequence is scaremongering nonsense.
“Secondly the ‘very simple physics’ he claims to draw on is just too simple and leaves out other pretty simple physics.
The supposed large magnifying effect of water vapour which is a more significant contributor to infra-red absorption and emission than the trace gas CO2 has been widely challenged along with other assumptions of the CO2 centred theory. More fundamentally wherever those considerations lead a number of feedback effects totally negate any impact CO2 changes may have on surface temperatures. For example extra CO2 enhances plant growth and photosynthetic transpiration which is a powerful cooling effect and the more CO2 the more the cooling. So any extra surface warming due to extra CO2 in the atmosphere is negated by extra cooling caused by extra photosynthetic transpiration. Warming also enhances plant growth so if at one point there were insufficient plants to do the cooling and therefore warming occurred that would enhance plant growth and extend the growing season until there are sufficient plants to provide cooling to negate any warming.
“Martin Rees and the IPCC should be prepared to defend their CO2-driven climate change position but they have still failed to produce any observational evidence for their hypothesis and the BBC consistently avoids allowing any air time to Climate Realist scientists who can easily refute the CO2 hypothesis. Nevertheless I am glad Martin Rees did not repeat the banal claims of Professor Corine Le Quere of the University of East Anglia that ‘There is no other explanation for it (= recent(?) Climate change)’. Perhaps he realizes that our WeatherAction verification of predicted chains of events leading from solar activity to extreme weather events is evidence that the Sun causes ‘it’.
More HERE
We-don’t-want-to-talk-about-it-gate
Why won't more politicians talk about Climategate?
Americans honor the courageous informant, the gutsy citizen who stands against the savagery of the profit-mongering conglomerate. Well, sometimes. It appears, believe it or not, that there are those who aren't religiously tethered to this sacred obligation.
For now—because of revelations of the ClimateGate scandal, in which hacked e-mails revealed discussions among top climate scientists about the manipulation of evidence—Phil Jones, head of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit in Britain, has stepped down from his position. Michael Mann, architect of the famous "hockey stick" graph, is now under investigation by Pennsylvania State University. Similar inquiries should follow.
Yet Barbara Boxer, the Democratic chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, is off hunting bigger game. "You call it 'ClimateGate'; I call it 'E-mail-theft-gate,'" Boxer clarified during a committee shindig. "We may well have a hearing on this; we may not. We may have a briefing for senators; we may not." Boxer, as steady as they come, went on to put the focus where it belongs: on hackers. She warned: "Part of our looking at this will be looking at a criminal activity which could have well been coordinated. ... This is a crime."
If this hacker(s) is unearthed on U.S. soil (or anywhere in the Middle East, actually), Boxer can jettison the guilty party to Gitmo for some well-deserved sleep deprivation. But surely there is time for some sort of investigation? This is, after all, the senator who ran a vital committee hearing in 2008 so that an Environmental Protection Agency whistle-blower, who accused the Bush administration of failing to address greenhouse gas emissions appropriately, could have his say. Boxer's rigid devotion to rule of law is also admirable. But this is the senator who championed the Military Whistleblower Protection Act and fought for whistle-blowing rights for defense contractor employees (to ferret out bureaucratic waste) and for nurses (to protect patients' rights).
All of which sound like sensible protections for the truth-seeking citizen. Because taxpayers matter.
So take Kevin Trenberth, who was caught claiming it was a "travesty" that climate scientists could not "account for the lack of warming at the moment"—though such anxiety never slowed him from weaving unnerving tales of calamity. Trenberth runs the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., which obtains 95 percent of its funding from taxpayers.
Take the taxpayer-funded EPA, which was handed the incredible power to arbitrarily (and without Congress) regulate all carbon dioxide, through the Clean Air Act, in part because of the science in question.
Take NASA, which—despite a 2-year-old Freedom of Information Act request asking for research detailing its historical data—continues to ignore taxpayers. Are these state secrets?
Surely this insularity is one reason 59 percent of Americans, according to a new Rasmussen poll, believe it is "somewhat likely" that some scientists falsified research data to support their own global warming theories. (Thirty-five percent of Americans believe it's "very likely.")
Fortunately, President Barack Obama has an unwavering admiration of truth tellers, asserting during his campaign that their "acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled."
Well, we don't need acts of courage and patriotism. Not yet. Just start with a committee hearing, and work your way up. Because the real crime here would be to continue to irresponsibly pass more experimental legislation that fundamentally undermines our affluent economy and free society on the word of those whom we might not be able to trust.
SOURCE
Will smart meters mean smart coercion?
Dallas residents have been up in arms over the new "smart meters" installed in their backyards. Digital smart meters, which can monitor electric, natural gas, and water usage, allow utility companies to remotely read usage levels and control the delivery of services. Many claim their monthly electric bills have spiked to outrageous levels since being installed. Some have held meetings, set up websites and blogs, started petitions and confronted installers, refusing to allow them to switch out the meters at their homes.
This isn't anti-technology Luddism, this is legitimate concern. Wired recently ran an article, "Security Pros Question Deployment of Smart Meters," which is concerned with the fact that the whole "smart grid" is being deployed nationwide before security guidelines have even been developed. "The most common vulnerability," says the article, is "cross-site request forgery" in which a hacker can hijack an authentication cookie stored in a user’s browser and obtain access to the system as that user. Encryption schemes, it seems, are lagging behind advances in encryption cracking. Add to that the fact that smart meters have a remote shut-off capability and you can see the potential for mayhem.
But libertarians see much greater potential for misuse and abuse. Already, enviro-manipulators are counting the days until everyone's energy usage – electricity, gas, water – can be monitored and posted on a public website where every neighbor can monitor everyone else's usage.
An article in Grist, "Smart meters save energy, water, and dollars," describes a pilot program in which smart water meters take hourly readings and participants can check each other's consumption on a social networking site. Then the author adds, "Nothing like a little peer pressure to get you to turn off the tap."
Yes, imagine your nosy neighbor seeing the spike in your water usage chart whenever you water your plants, make ice cubes, or flush your commode when you get up to pee at two AM every night. Why not just hand them binoculars?
But given the history of ever-escalating government intrusion into our private lives, libertarians warn it won't be long before that "peer pressure" evolves into "mandatory compliance." We can all look forward to visits from the Energy Compliance Cops knocking on our doors with warnings and fines and subpoenas and arrest warrants and, inevitably, SWAT cops with battering rams and deadly weapons. That's not paranoia, that's tomorrow's reality. Ask any peaceful pot smoker.
SOURCE
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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here
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12 March, 2010
Obama facing opposition to his attempt to impose Warmist regulations
With the "science" of global warming collapsing like a house of cards, the Copenhagen "climate change" conference accomplishing absolutely nothing and a massive energy tax hike going nowhere in the U.S. Senate, President Barack Obama is now faced with a conundrum. He can either read the handwriting on the wall, or seek to accomplish through regulation what he couldn't accomplish through legislation: the handover of U.S. environmental policy to radical environmentalists.
Does any of this sound familiar?
This is frankly the same dynamic we are witnessing in the health care debate. There, Obama says he will use procedural loopholes to ram his version of a socialized medicine proposal through the U.S. Congress against the expressed will of the American people.
Once again, it appears that Obama simply cannot comprehend the meaning of a word understood by literally millions of toddlers: "No."
As he seeks to push his health care proposals on the one hand, Obama will no doubt attempt to frame the debate along partisan lines. On the energy front, it won't be so easy.
That's because West Virginia Senator John D. Rockefeller – who is among the President's staunchest allies in the U.S. Senate – is standing up to Obama and the radical environmentalists' power grab. Rockefeller has recently introduced legislation that would place a two-year moratorium on the EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gases from power plants and other stationary emitters, which is precisely the regulatory authority Obama is threatening to use if Congress doesn't pass his "cap and trade" bill this year.
In unveiling his legislation, Rockefeller noted that his primary objective was to "safeguard jobs," but he bluntly reminded Obama that it was "Congress, not the EPA" which bears responsibility for setting the nation's energy policy. Additionally, three other Democratic Senators recently joined Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski in supporting a resolution that would overturn the EPA's "scientific" finding of fact regarding greenhouse gases – a finding that forms the basis of Obama's promised regulatory push.
Whether it's through regulation or legislation, though, the bottom line is that Obama is seeking to dramatically raise energy prices on American consumers. In fact, documents obtained from his own Treasury Department show that the so-called "Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act" (a.k.a. "cap and trade") could drain as much as $200 billion from U.S. taxpayers, or $1,700 per family.
Other estimates place the per-family costs as high as $3,100 a year.
Clearly, that sort of tax hike isn't something the American taxpayers can afford in any economic environment – let alone this one – even if the legislation were to accomplish its stated objectives of reducing global carbon emissions.
But that's another fundamental problem.
Neither "cap and trade" nor excessive EPA regulation will do anything to stop countries like China from building dozens of new "dirty" coal plants over the next decade – and perhaps beyond. And frankly, neither will the $50 billion a year that Obama is seeking to steer into a United Nations "climate change fund" for developing nations – part of an international shakedown which columnist Charles Krauthammer has correctly dubbed "wealth redistribution via global socialism."
Speaking of China (and enviro-scams), it's also worth noting that America's new "bailout banker" is one of several countries benefiting from billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars that were supposed to create "green jobs" here in America – yet another example of the true face of eco-socialism.
Fortunately, Sen. Rockefeller and others like him are standing up for American jobs by refusing to let Obama hand the reins of the EPA over to the same environmental kooks who recently ran the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change into the ground.
Perhaps these courageous Democrats can finally teach the President the meaning of the word "No," although from the looks of it voters may have to do that for themselves in 2012.
SOURCE
2010: The year global warming froze Florida
Floridians have suffered through the coldest winter in almost 30 years. In some parts of South Florida, it’s been colder than anytime in the last 83 years. So many records were smashed that if they were stacked, they would rival the thickness of Al Gore’s investment portfolio. In fact, Gore’s claims that global warming will produce dramatic and cataclysmic warming appear to be melting faster than any glacier.
Gore is hardly alone in his poor forecasting record. Ten years ago, David Viner from the University of East Anglia said “Snowfall will become a very rare and exciting event.” “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” Reality check: On February 13th, 49 of 50 states had snow on the ground.
Here are more cold hard facts from Frozen Florida: Miami Beach had its coldest January-February since record-keeping began in1927. It was the second-coldest at West Palm Beach since records were started in 1888. Naples had its 3rd coldest January-February since records began in 1942. Only in the winters of 1940, 1958, 1977 and 1981 did the January-February average temperature approach the bone chilling cold of 2010.
People took desperate measures to stay warm. Families used space heaters to fight off the cold. Many were not experienced at using portable heating devices and fires broke out in some homes. Several people had to be treated for carbon monoxide poisoning from using charcoal grills inside their homes. On one of the coldest mornings, the power demand was so great that 35,000 customers lost power.
The first 13 days of 2010 were cold across all of Florida. During this period, temperatures at West Palm Beach ranged between 43 and 32 degrees with an average of 39. The average temperature is 56 degrees. On nine of those mornings the low was in the 30s. A friend of mine who lives in West Palm Beach told me his car thermometer actually read 27 degrees on the morning of the 10th. Amazingly on the 10th the high temperature at Fort Lauderdale, Miami, West Palm Beach and Naples were all at or below 50 degrees.
At West Palm Beach, the average temperature from January 2nd to the 13th was 49.9 degrees. That made it the coldest 12-day period since records began in 1888 beating out January 16th to the 27th 1977 by a full degree. On the morning of January 7th the low temperature fell to 37 degrees at Palm Beach International Airport. That broke the record of 38 set in 1903.
The agricultural losses have been enormous, with estimate crop losses of $500 million. The agricultural areas of Glades, Hendry, Collier counties had up to 7 days of below-freezing temperatures. Citrus trees were damaged as temperatures in the orange groves fell below the critical 28 degrees for more than four hours. Some 100,000 tropical fish being raised on a fish farm froze to death costing the farmer an estimated $535,000. The Miami Metro Zoo closed its doors for the first time in 30 years due to the record cold. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said Iguanas were falling from trees and some were dying as a result of temperatures falling below 40 degrees.
The record cold weather is continuing into March. Low temperatures in the upper 30s and low 40s continued into the first weekend. The El Niño winds over Florida will continue well into March which means the state could have more record cold later this month.
Ask anyone in South Florida what they think of global warming. They’ll probably tell you “my lips are too numb to talk!”
SOURCE
Apologists for Global Warming Alarmists Respond to Climategate
Apparently the U.S. National Academies of Science is preparing to push back against the damage that has been done to the cause of global warming alarmism and The New York Times is prepared to weigh in with “news” that boosts the sullied reputation of alarmists.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) has obtained copies of the emails documenting this new strategy and they are posted at GlobalWarming.org. It’s very evident from the messages that this strategy is animated more by a political agenda than it is by a detached approach to science.
“The response of these alarmist scientists to the Climategate scientific fraud scandal has little to do with their responsibilities as scientists and everything to do with saving their political position,” Myron Ebell Director of Energy and Global Warming Policy at CEI said in a press release. “The e-mails reveal a group of scientists plotting a political strategy to minimize the effects of climategate in the public debate on global warming.”
As TimesCheck has previously reported, The Times finally acknowledged the “climategate” scandal in a front page piece that does not exactly vindicate global warming skeptics. As Ebell points out in a piece he wrote for FoxNews.com, the reporter, John Broder, is quite sympathetic toward the alarmist position.
“Broder’s analysis follows the party line that has been worked out among the leading alarmist climate scientists since the scandal broke on November 19, 2009,” Ebell observes. “And Broder makes no effort to conceal where his sympathies lie. He writes: “But serious damage has already been done,” and then discusses polling data that shows increasing public disbelief in the global warming crisis. From my perspective, that’s serious good that has been done, not damage, but then I’m not an unbiased, objective Times reporter.”
The other problem here highlighted in Ebell’s piece is the promotion of alarmist talking points that substitutes for straight reporting.
“The battle is asymmetric, in the sense that scientists feel compelled to support their findings with careful observation and replicable analysis, while their critics are free to make sweeping statements condemning their work as fraudulent,” Broder tells readers.
But as climategate demonstrates, there has been very little in the way of careful, methodical observation. As it turns out, many of the scientists have declined to share their data and methods in an effort to conceal evidence of data manipulation and distortion.
Former Vice-President Al Gore has already written an op-ed in the New York Times explaining away the climategate scandal and advancing alarmist claims. Readers can expect some of these talking points to find their way onto the news pages.
SOURCE
Global Warming Alarmism is a Grave Threat to our Liberty
Speech by Václav Klaus, 2010 Club for Growth Economic Winter Conference, Palm Beach, Florida, March 5, 2010. Václav Klaus is President of the Czech Republic
Thank you for giving me the chance to address this distinguished audience and for asking me to speak on one of the issues I consider absolutely crucial. I am convinced that the ideology of environmentalism, particularly its extreme variant, the global warming alarmism, and its widespread acceptance by politicians, journalists and all kinds of leftist intellectuals is the main threat to freedom and prosperity we are facing today.
I feel very strongly about this issue and keep warning against it by writing and speaking – in my own country, the Czech Republic, in Europe, in America and elsewhere. My last speech devoted to this topic was in Cairo, Egypt, less than a month ago. Three years ago, I put my arguments into a book with the title “Blue Planet in Green Shackles”, which is now available in 15 languages, including English but also for example Arabic or Japanese. My experience tells me that making speeches, lecturing, writing articles and books, giving interviews and participating in media discussions is helpful but not sufficient. These efforts have to be supplemented by political activity and if I understand the ambitions of the Club of Growth and of this conference correctly it is an attempt in this direction. That is most commendable. This is the reason why I accepted the invitation to come all the way from Prague to Palm Beach. An additional positive effect is that the temperature here is much warmer than in Prague just now. You are “locally” warmed and I will confirm back in Prague that you survive such a dangerously warm climate without major inconveniencies.
To criticize environmentalism is for me not a new, suddenly discovered, fashionable or trendy activity. At the beginning of the 1970s I came across the first publications of the infamous Club of Rome, which tried to scare us by predicting an imminent exhaustion of natural resources and by asking for a radical change in our behavior. Its supporters had been arguing already then very dramatically that we should reduce our consumption of fossil fuels but – and we should not forget it – for different reasons than now. As an economist, I knew it was a wrong argumentation and the subsequent four decades proved it quite convincingly. Today, we have more proven deposits of basic raw materials and energy resources than 40 years ago. I felt already then that this was an arrogant, elitist and dirigistic doctrine attempting to stop economic growth, the overall social development and human progress.
At that time, I myself lived under a very oppressive, destructive and totally irrational, and therefore unproductive, communist regime and was not able to participate in the worldwide polemics with these views. People like me were not allowed to travel to the West, or even to dream about having a chance to publish articles or make speeches abroad. Yet, I was very frustrated and could not understand how it was possible that such an irrational doctrine was not easily and convincingly refuted and rejected in the free western world.
In 1989, communism collapsed and we were finally free. To my great surprise, the environmentalist doctrine was still alive and even flourishing in its new incarnation called global warming doctrine. In 1992, the Rio Earth Summit endorsed the doctrine of global warming and climate change as a leading ideology of our times. I expected that the ideology of the free world would be based on freedom, parliamentary democracy and market economy – concepts that were absolutely crucial for us in the former communist countries in the moment of our radical and revolutionary transition from communism to free society. Life under communism made us extremely sensitive, if not oversensitive to all possible symptoms of violation and erosion of our freedom. That is the reason why I feel endangered now. The subtitle of the above mentioned book asks “What is endangered: Climate or Freedom?” My answer is resolute: climate is ok, what is under threat is freedom.
The reason is that environmentalism and its most extreme version, global warming alarmism, asks for an almost unprecedented expansion of government intrusion and intervention into our lives and of government control over us. We are forced to accept rules about how to live, what to do, how to behave, what to consume, what to eat, how to travel and many other things. Some of us had experienced similar examples of such manipulation with ourselves in the communist era and feel obliged to do everything we can to avoid similar developments in the future.
It is, however, not only about freedom. Environmentalism also wants to suppress economic growth, reduce prosperity and hinder human progress. When I was recently in Egypt on the occasion of the launching of the Arabic version of my book, it became obvious to me that the people there care more about the continuation of their economic development than about freedom as we understand it. Some of us know that freedom and prosperity cannot be separated but it is evident that environmentalism – as the recent Copenhagen conference demonstrated – wants to impair prosperity and stop human progress especially in the developing world. And that is unacceptable.
The environmentalists ask for substantial reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. When it happens – with our current technologies – it will substantially increase the costs of energy for everyone because it would imply restrictions on the use of oil and coal, which are no doubt much cheaper than all alternative energy sources. Cheap energy is the source of much of our life-style and our prosperity. When energy prices go up, the costs of nearly all other goods and services go up as well. All carbon taxes, cap-and-trade schemes and wind and solar power subsidies are steps in the wrong direction, leading to a severe and protracted economic hardship for little or no benefit.
My lifelong experience tells me that I have to start protesting very loudly when someone tells me: “Don’t trust the market, trust me and us.” This is what I had been hearing for 40 years of my life under communism and I am not ready to accept it now. The belief in the possibility of controlling the Earth’s climate by reducing the anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide, I call it the theory of climate control, is as irrational, arrogant and pretentious as the communist planning that people like me were objects of for so many years.
As I said, politicians bought into this doctrine at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, fell in love with it and started organizing a whole set of economically damaging and freedom endangering measures. They came to the conclusion that playing the global warming game is an easy, politically correct and from the point of potential election gains very profitable card to play (especially when it is obvious that they themselves will not carry the costs of the measures they are implementing and will not be responsible for their consequences).
There are plenty of arguments suggesting that the real threat for human society is not global warming itself. The real threat comes when politicians start manipulating the climate and all of us.
In my views, I am not being influenced by the recent scandals connected with the work of the IPCC and some of its leading exponents. All of that has been known for years to everyone who was interested. The same is true about all the relevant arguments used in today’s debate. They are available and it is difficult to add anything fundamentally new to them. It is necessary to keep stressing several basic facts and arguments that are well-known, but unfortunately largely ignored.
First, the statistically well-documented increase in global temperature has been until now very small and not bigger than the temperature fluctuations in the last centuries and millennia. Throughout the whole 20th century, with all the problematic data collection and adjustments – it was only 0.74 °C. I am surprised again and again that – because of the power of the environmentalist propaganda – people suppose it was much more.
Second, it is undisputed that there has been no statistically significant net global warming in the last twelve to fourteen years. I know that this is not a proof of the impossibility of long-term climate changes but it is a relevant piece of information which should not be ignored or downplayed. New data and new theories are emerging every day and some of them suggest the probability of future cooling, not warming.
Third, the scientific dispute about the causes of the undergoing climate changes is not over, it continues. Despite contrary assertions, there is no scientific consensus about it. What is more and more evident is that CO2 is losing the position of the main culprit and that its potential impact has already been more or less “consumed.” Simple, monocasual theory of functional relationship between CO2 and temperature is evidently untenable. There is absolutely no linearity between CO2 emissions and temperature.
Fourth, the idea of a static, unchanging climate is, no doubt, foreign to the history of the Earth. The climate has always been changing and will always be.
I am convinced that the impact of the small climate changes we have experienced (and may experience in the foreseeable future) upon human beings and all kinds of their activities is – because of their size – practically negligible. In its model simulations, the IPCC suggests that – because of higher temperatures – the world GDP in the year 2100 will be 2.9% lower than without any warming. I repeat, only 2.9% if we do nothing and let the warming – predicted by the IPCC – continue. The same models suggest that the GDP per capita in the developed countries will be eight times higher than now and in the developing countries about five times higher than that of the developed world today.
These figures are not mine, these are the figures of the leading exponents of the global warming doctrine. The question must be therefore raised: should we drastically limit CO2 emissions today by 20, 30, 50, or 80% and, thereby, abandon our way of life for the sake of such a small effect considering that the future generations will be far better off than we are today? My answer is that 2.9% of the future GDP is a minor loss. A loss generated by a completely useless fight against global warming, planned by the contemporary global warming alarmists, would be far greater.
Politicians, their bureaucrats as well as many well-meaning individuals who accept the alarmist view of anthropogenic climate change probably hope that – by doing so – they are displaying intelligence, virtue and altruism. Some of them even believe they are saving the Earth. We should tell them that they are merely passive players in the hands of lobbyists, of producers of green technologies, of agrobusiness firms producing ethanol, of trading firms dealing in carbon emission rights, etc., who hope to make billions at our costs. There is no altruism there. It is a political and business cold-hearted calculation.
Before concluding, I have to repeat my question: “What is endangered?” My answer is: “our freedom, and our prosperity.” *
One last comment. I very often see that people confuse two different things – a necessary protection of the environment (necessary because there is no doubt that we have to take care of the rivers, lakes, seas, forests and air) and an irrational attempt to fight or to protect the climate. I am very much in favor of rational efforts when it comes to environmental protection, but I resolutely reject any attempts to change or – as I frequently hear – to combat climate.
SOURCE
Pimping solar power
There’s no question that alternative and renewable fuels and energy sources are the way to go – if they’re feasible. Solar, wind, geo-thermal and others all promise clean and renewable energy for our future. But one of the more irritating things concerning some of those energy sources are the claims that they’re technologically ready for prime time. Geo-thermal being the exception (but a very minor source), wind and solar aren’t at all where they need to be to provide for the energy needs of the world. That doesn’t stop the usual suspects from implying they are.
One of the recent stories that helped blunt those sorts of assertions was that of Spain’s attempt to go green. The result was a loss of jobs and heavy subsidies for the solar power industry. Well apparently it is time to resurrect Spain and the solar industry and the New York Times obliges:
Although Spain’s long-term goal had been to produce 400 megawatts of electricity from solar panels by 2010, it reached that milestone by the end of 2007.That’s wonderful, but in 2009, Spain’s power demand declined by 4.3% to 251,305 GWh. So while solar is a least contributing, it’s not contributing much. And there are still serious and obvious problems with solar power. The example used comes from Florida:
In 2008 the nation connected 2.5 gigawatts of solar power into its grid, more than quintupling its previous capacity and making it second to Germany, the world leader. But many of the hastily opened plants offered no hope of being cost-competitive with conventional power, being poorly designed or located where sunshine was inadequate, for example.
Across 500 acres north of West Palm Beach, the FPL Group utility is assembling a life-size Erector Set of 190,000 shimmering mirrors and thousands of steel pylons that stretch as far as the eye can see. When it is completed by the end of the year, this vast project will be the world’s second-largest solar plant.The fact that they’re experimenting with solar is a good thing. It needs a lot of that. However the fact that this covers 500 acres of land is notable. 500 acres. It is the world’s 2nd largest solar array. And its contribution? At its peak, it will produce 75 megawatts of power. That’s about enough to power 11,000 homes.
But that is not its real novelty. The solar array is being grafted onto the back of the nation’s largest fossil-fuel power plant, fired by natural gas. It is an experiment in whether conventional power generation can be married with renewable power in a way that lowers costs and spares the environment.
Sitting right next too it is a natural gas fired power plant. In fact, that’s the plant on which these panels are grafted. It covers far fewer acres than does the solar array and it produces 3,800 MW of power – enough to power 557,333 homes.
The difference couldn’t be more obvious. Solar is much too inefficient in terms of power provided/land use to be practical as a stand alone source. To produce the same power the gas fired plant does would require an array that covers over 25,000 acres.
And there are other drawbacks as well.
This project is among a handful of innovative hybrid designs meant to use the sun’s power as an adjunct to coal or gas in producing electricity. While other solar projects already use small gas-fired turbines to provide backup power for cloudy days or at night, this is the first time that a conventional plant is being retrofitted with the latest solar technology on such an industrial scale.In other words, solar has a place as an add on, an adjunct, a gap filler for peak times (if it is sunny), but as a stand alone, the technology is not ready for prime time. As noted most stand-alone solar arrays have small gas-fired turbines to provide backup for cloudy days an night. And those backups are used – a lot.
The project’s advantages are obvious: electricity generated from the sun will allow FPL to cut natural gas use and reduce carbon dioxide emissions. It will provide extra power when it is most needed: when the summer sun is shining, Floridians are cranking up their air-conditioning and electricity demand is at its highest.
The plant also serves as a real-life test on how to reduce the cost of solar power, which remains much more expensive than most other forms of electrical generation. FPL Group, the parent company of Florida Power and Light, expects to cut costs by about 20 percent compared with a stand-alone solar facility, since it does not have to build a new steam turbine or new high-power transmission lines.
“We’d love to tell you that solar power is as economic as fossil fuels, but the reality is that it is not,” Lewis Hay III, FPL’s chairman and chief executive, said on a recent tour of the plant. “We have got to figure out ways to get costs down. As we saw with wind power, a lot has to do with scale.”
It also requires heavy government subsidy since the cost of producing solar power is so high (inefficiency due to technology and its limitations on cloudy days and obviously, at night).
The whole point of this is to get real about the alternatives and understand that while everyone would love to see them come into their own as dependable sources of energy that can replace dirtier sources, the technology doesn’t yet exist. Until it does, I’m not at all ready to trade the eye-pollution of acres and acres of solar panels for a few megawatts of power – not when we’re the largest producer of natural gas (the cleanest burning fossil fuel we have) in the world.
When solar is ready (and that means dependable and steady power on the minimum of land) I’m ready to see it deployed. But until then, if it’s going to be pimped, it would be nice if those pimping it would include the good, the bad and the ugly when they talk about it. Of course if they did that, it wouldn’t be pimping, would it?
SOURCE
Crazy California's war on electricity
In many countries, electric utilities struggle to keep up with demand, and often fail. The World Bank estimates that almost 1.5 billion men, women, and children lack reliable access to electricity. They want it, but they can't have it. In new-agey ??California, it's the other way around. The centerpiece of California's energy policy is really the absence of energy.
If that sounds crazy -- and it is! -- consider this impressive web of regulation that the government has spun: Elected officials enacted a moratorium on new nuclear power plants. New coal plants are illegal. Large scale hydropower is unthinkable for California's environmentally sensitive voters, because it harms fish. Natural gas plants emit half as much carbon as coal plants, but they are banned in much of California because they cannot get air quality permits for particulate emissions.
In 2006, the State Water Resources Control Board ruled that 19 coastal natural gas power plants were in violation of the Clean Water Act for using a process called "once-through cooling," by which ocean water is pumped into a power plant in order to condense steam into water to be reused. This can harm aquatic wildlife, so, at the behest of environmentalist groups, the SWRCB ordered coastal power plants to make costly refurbishments. According to the Energy Commission, "[I]t is likely that plant operators will choose retirement in the face of costly retrofits."
California doesn't have generation capacity to spare, so it will have to replace these plants, most of which are located in the southern part of the state. But the south California air basin is out of compliance with air quality standards for particulate emissions. It is well nigh impossible for utilities to obtain an air quality permit for a natural gas plant from the South Coast Air Quality Management District.
Existing nuclear power is also under attack. In 2006, the legislature passed a bill requiring the Energy Commission to assess the nuclear plants' vulnerability to earthquakes. In fact, the legislation was designed to stack the deck against nuclear when these plants come up for relicensing. It is unlikely that California utilities can meet demand for electricity without these 21 power plants. Yet California's elected officials, in Sacramento and elsewhere, seem to think that conventional energy is unnecessary as long as the Golden State aggressively pursues conservation and renewable energy.
That's the theory anyway. However, the state's pro-green, anti-energy policies make it difficult even for the generation of alternative energy.
California is the country's leading dairy state, and the Energy Commission has identified methane emitted by cows as a major source of renewable energy. But it is impossible to make use of this "bio-methane" from California's dairy farms because air quality agencies refuse to permit a generating facility. The state's deserts are obvious locations for generating solar power. Yet California Senator Dianne Feinstein is trying to block the construction of solar power plants in the Mojave in order to protect a species of turtle.
California's mountain ranges are ideal for wind power. For many environmentalists, however, wind turbines are unacceptable, because the giant, rotating blades kill things that fly. The New York Times recently quoted a California wind power developer saying, "Regulators are concerned about birds; now they're concerned about bats..." Next they'll be concerned about taxpayers.
Just kidding on that last point. Renewable energies are far more expensive than burning fossil fuels but that's only a start. To meet the state's current renewable energy targets (20 percent of the state's electricity was supposed to come from renewable energy sources by this year), the Public Utilities Commission reports that California utilities would have to build seven transmission lines, at a cost of $12 billion, to move electricity generated by renewables in remote regions to the urban centers where the electricity is consumed.
However, there could be a catch. Transmission lines are almost impossible to build in California due to the onerous permitting process designed to mitigate environmental impact.
No problem! said Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. When it became clear that the state couldn't meet its 2010 goals, he simply moved the goalposts. He signed an executive order that increased the unworkable renewable energy targets and postponed them -- by a decade.
California's story should be a cautionary tale of how not to manage energy policy. Instead, it is touted by politicians and all too often swallowed hook, line, and sinker by gullible journalists....
More HERE
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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here
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11 March, 2010
An amusing email from a Warmist
The following scornful email was sent to Benny Peiser by retired palaeoclimatologist William Ruddiman [rudds2@ntelos.net]. I append to it Benny Peiser's reply. The thing that strikes one about the email is that he quite correctly notes a slight long term warming trend since the little ice age but fails to address the two principal points at issue: Whether or not mankind is the cause of the observed warming and whether the warming is great enough to be cause for alarm. The fact that the graphs of temperature change that you normally see are scaled in tenths of one degree probably tells you all you need to know about the latter question
Ruddiman is however an outlier among Warmists. He claims that the invention of farming 8,000 years ago caused global warming! Back to the jungles!
I am sorry to see your stream of posts about 'global cooling' coming to an end, no doubt because of the inconvenient rebound of global temperature in 2009. I had really been enjoying watching your global-coolers embarrass themselves. To mainstream scientists like me, the reasoning behind their arguments fall far below that of the average 7-year-old. If your readers doubt this, ask them to find the nearest available 7-year-old, show him or her a plot of global temperature for the last 100-150 years, and ask 6 questions:
1. Did the overall temperature trend in the last 125 years go down or up?
2. Were there times when the upward trend leveled out or went down?
3. Afterward, did temperatures warm to levels even higher than before?
4. Do the last 5 or so years show a small cooling trend?
5. Does this recent cooling trend differ in any obvious way from the earlier ones?
6. Do you think the upward warming trend is likely to resume in the future? (see below)
The answers to the first 5 questions are obvious: up, yes, yes, yes, and no. So question 6 is the key. It requires the child to look at the record of past temperature changes, think about the lessons learned (a tiny bit!, but more than your global coolers), and draw a simple conclusion.
So-- how did your nearest available 7-year-old respond? I doubt that he/she would find the recent cooling different in any obvious way from the range of several previous ones. If so, this 7-year-old judged that the long-term warming trend will resume and will likely reach even higher levels (as it seems to have begun to do in 2009). And if so, your nearest available child understands natural climatic variability far better than you.
Benny Peiser replies:
One of the problems with true believers is that they tend to misrepresent the actual position one takes. My own stance is well known and has been reported repeatedly on CCNet and other media outlets: "It is quite possible that global temperatures might start rising again in the foreseeable future. Admittedly, no one knows exactly if and when this will happen – and if, whether the renewed warming trend will be pronounced, moderate or insignificant. In all likelihood, we will not know for the next twenty or thirty years who will be right or wrong - the climate sceptics or the alarmists. Nevertheless, as long as the global warming standstill continues, more or less, and as long as the political deadlock between the West and the rest of the world lingers, international climate politics will remain firmly on ice."
Global warming benefits outweigh harms
Without the greenhouse effect to keep our world warm, the planet would have an average temperature of minus 18 degrees Celsius. Because we do have it, the temperature is a comfortable plus 15 degrees Celsius.
Other inconvenient facts ignored by the activists: Carbon dioxide is a non-polluting gas that is essential for plant photosynthesis. Higher concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere produce bigger crop harvests and larger and healthier forests--results environmentalists used to like.
There are legitimate reasons to restrict emissions of pollutants into the atmosphere. Recycling makes sense and protecting the environment is good for everyone. But we should not fool ourselves into thinking we can change the temperature of the Earth by doing these things.
The Missing Effects of Global Warming
For the past decade, according to highly accurate measurements taken from satellites, there has been no global warming. Even though atmospheric CO2 has continued to accumulate—up about 4 percent in the past 10 years—the global mean temperature has remained flat. That should raise obvious questions about CO2 being the cause of climate change.Orbiting satellites gather temperature readings around the globe, accurate to 0.1 degree Celsius. Warming in the upper atmosphere should occur before any surface warming effect, but NASA’s data show that has not been happening. Interestingly, in the 18 years those satellites have been recording global temperatures, they actually have shown a slight decrease in average temperatures. The images shown in Figure 6 reveal that the expected “fingerprint” of warming in the upper atmosphere is missing.
In spite of warnings of severe consequences from rising seas, droughts, severe weather, species extinction, and other disasters, the record shows little if any evidence of such effects. With scientific evidence being ignored, emotional arguments and anecdotal data are ruling the day. The media subjects us to one frightening image of environmental nightmares after another, linking each to global warming. Journalists and activist scientists use hurricanes, wildfires, and starving polar bears to appeal to our emotions, not our reason. They are far more concerned with anecdotal observations of such things as frozen sea ice inside the Arctic Circle than they are with understanding why it is happening and how frequently it has occurred in the past.
Real-World Observations
A report by a team of 40 scientists from a dozen countries, released in June 2009, found the following:
• “The average temperature history of Antarctica provides no evidence of twentieth century warming.”
• “The results of several research studies argue strongly against claims that CO2-induced global warming would cause catastrophic disintegration of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets.
• “The mean rate of global sea level rise has not accelerated over the recent past. The determinants of sea level are poorly understood due to considerable uncertainty associated with a number of basic parameters that are related to the water balance of the world’s oceans and the meltwater contribution of Greenland and Antarctica.”
• “[D]espite the supposedly “unprecedented” warming of the twentieth century, there has been no increase in the intensity or frequency of tropical cyclones globally or in any of the specific oceans.”
After warnings that 2007 would be the hottest year on record and a record year for hurricanes, we experienced, in 2008, the coolest year since 2001 and, by some measures, the most benign hurricane season in the Northern Hemisphere in three decades.
Even though recent changes in our atmosphere are all within the bounds of the Earth’s natural variability, a growing number of people seem willing to throw away trillions of dollars on fruitless solutions. It’s ridiculous to allow emotional appeals and anecdotal data to shape our conclusions and influence our expenditures when real science and technology are at our fingertips.
Based on the seasonal and geographic distribution of any projected warming, a good case can be made that today’s temperature is not as beneficial for humans as a warmer world temperature would be.
SOURCE
Reduced cloud cover did it not CO2
Steve Short [steve@ecoengineers.com] posted this interesting analysis of the effect of albedo during the period 1983 -2001. It interesting that the conclusion of this article is that the warming during that period can be attributed to reduced albedo resulting from reduced cloud cover. Surprise that isn't it ? Completely natural
According to Pinker (2005), global surface solar irradiance increased by 0.16 W/m^2/year over the 18 year period 1983 – 2001 or 2.88 W/m^2 over the entire period. This was a period of claimed significant anthropogenic global warming. This change in surface solar irradiance over 1983 - 2001 is almost exactly 1.2% of the mean total surface solar irradiance of recent decades of 238.9 W/m^2 (K, T & F, 2009).
According to NASA, mean global cloud cover declined from about 0.677 (67.7%) in 1983 to about 0.644 (64.4%) in 2001 or a decline of 0.033 (3.3%). The 27 year mean global cloud cover 1983 – 2008 is about 0.664 (66.4%) (all NASA data)
The average Bond Albedo (A) of recent decades has been almost exactly 0.300, hence 1 – A = 0.700
It is possible to estimate the relationship between albedo and total cloud cover about the mean global cloud cover and it may be described by the simple relationship:
Albedo (A) = 0.250C + 0.134 where C = cloud cover. The 0.134 term presumably represents the surface SW reflection.
For example; A = 0.300 = 0.25 x 0.664 + 0.134
This means that in 1983; A = 0.25 x 0.677 + 0.134 = 0.303
and
in 2001; A = 0.25 x 0.644 + 0.134 = 0.295
Thus in 1983; 1 – A = 1 – 0.303 = 0.697
and in 2001; 1 – A = 1 – 0.295 = 0.705
Therefore, between 1983 and 2001, the known reduction in the Earth’s albedo A as measured by NASA would have increased solar irradiance by 200 x [(0.705 – 0.697)/(0.705 + 0.695)]% = 200 x (0.008/1.402)% = 1.1%
This estimate of 1.1% increase in solar irradiance from cloud cover reduction over the 18 year period 1983 – 2001 is very close to the 1.2% increase in solar irradiance measured by Pinker for the same period.
Within the precision of the available data and this exercise, it may therefore be concluded that it is highly likely that Pinker’s finding was due to an almost exactly functionally equivalent decrease in Earth’s Bond albedo over the same period, resulting from global cloud cover reduction. Hence surface warming over that period may be reasonably attributed to that effect.
SOURCE
Hansen pisses on cap 'n trade, backs nukes
Excerpt from a speech recently given in Australia by warming evangelist James Hansen of GISS. The speech should jar Warmist politicians. He's really pissing on them
Science has shown that preservation of stable climate and the remarkable life that our planet harbours require a rapid slowdown of fossil fuel emissions. Atmospheric carbon dioxide, now almost 390 parts per million, must be brought back to 350ppm or less. That is possible, with actions that make sense for other reasons.
But the actions require a change to business-as-usual. Change is opposed by those profiting from our fossil-fuel addiction. Change will happen only with courageous political leadership. Leaders must draw attention to the moral imperative. We cannot pretend that we do not understand the consequences for our children and grandchildren. We cannot leave them with a situation spiralling out of their control. We must set a new course.
Yet what course is proposed? Hokey cap-and-trade with offsets, aka an emissions trading scheme. Scheme is the right word, a scheme to continue business-as-usual behind a fig leaf. The Kyoto Protocol was a cap-and-trade approach. Global emissions shot up faster than ever after its adoption. It is impossible to cap all emissions as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy. There is zero chance India and China will accept a cap. And why should they? Their emissions, on a per capita basis, are 10 times less than those of Australia or the US.
Fossil fuels are not really the cheapest energy. They are cheap because they are subsidised, because they do not pay for damage they cause to human health via air and water pollution, nor their environmental damage and horrendous consequences for posterity.
An honest effective approach to energy and climate must place a steadily rising price on carbon emissions. It can only be effective if it is a simple flat fee on all carbon fuels, collected from fossil fuel companies on the first sale, at the mine, wellhead or port of entry.
The fee will cause energy costs to rise, for fossil fuels, not all energies. The public will allow this fee to rise to the levels needed only if the money collected is given to the public. They will need the money to adapt their lifestyles and reduce their carbon footprint. The money, all of it, should be given as a monthly "green cheque" and possibly in part as an income-tax reduction. Each legal adult resident would get an equal share, easily delivered electronically to bank accounts or debit cards, with half a share for children up to two children per family.
Sure, some people may waste their green cheque on booze or babes. Such people will soon be paying more in increased energy prices than they get in their green cheque. Others will make changes to keep their added energy cost low, coming out ahead.
There will be strong economic incentive for businesses to find products that help consumers reduce fossil fuel use. Every activity that uses energy will be affected. Agricultural products from nearby fields will be favoured, for example, as opposed to food flown in from half way around the world. Changes will happen as people compare the price tags.
The rising price on carbon will spur energy efficiency, renewable energy, nuclear power, all sources that produce little or no carbon dioxide. Bellyaching howls from coal moguls must be ignored. Let them invest their money in renewable energies and nuclear power.
SOURCE
The U.N. to investigate itself
The United Nations will today announce an independent review of errors made by its climate change advisory body in an attempt to restore its credibility. A team of the world’s leading scientists will investigate the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and ask why its supposedly rigorous procedures failed to detect at least three serious overstatements of the risk from global warming.
The review will be overseen by the InterAcademy Council, whose members are drawn from the world’s leading national science academies, including Britain’s [Warmist] Royal Society, the United States National Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The review will be led by Robbert Dijkgraaf, co-chairman of the Interacademy Council and president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been asked to investigate the internal processes of the IPCC and will not consider the overarching question of whether it was right to claim that human activities were very likely to be causing global warming.
The review, which will be announced in New York by Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary General, and Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC’s chairman, is expected to recommend stricter checking of sources and much more careful wording to reflect the uncertainties in many areas of climate science.
The IPCC’s most glaring error was a claim that all Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035. Most glaciologists believe it would take another 300 years for the glaciers to melt at the present rate. It also claimed that global warming could cut rain-fed North African crop production by up to 50 per cent by 2020. A senior IPCC contributor has since admitted that there is no evidence to support this claim. The Dutch Government has asked the IPCC to correct its claim that more than half the Netherlands is below sea level. The environment ministry said that only 26 per cent of the country was below sea level.
The allegations about climate scientists are believed to have contributed to a sharp rise in public scepticism about climate change. Last month an opinion poll found that the proportion of the population that believes climate change is an established fact and largely man-made has fallen from 41 per cent in November to 26 per cent.
The Met Office, which produces the global temperature record used by the IPCC in its reports, has proposed a separate review of its data after admitting that public confidence in its findings had been undermined. The Met Office relies on analysis by the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, which is under investigation over allegations that its director manipulated raw data and tried to hide it from critics.
SOURCE
Thomas Jefferson Noted Global Warming in 19th Century
Climate change crusaders insist that the earth is warming largely due to the emission of greenhouse gases by motor vehicles and factories.
But Thomas Jefferson wrote about global warming back in the early 19th century, before there were any emissions from cars, coal-fired power plants, and other developments of the Industrial Age.
In a letter to Philadelphia physician and professor Nathaniel Chapman dated Dec. 11, 1809, nine months after he left the presidency, Jefferson wrote: “The change which has taken place in our climate is one of those facts which all men of years are sensible of and yet none can prove by regular evidence. They can only appeal to each other’s general observation for the fact.
“I remember that when I was a small boy, say sixty years ago, snows were frequent and deep in every winter, to my knee very often, to my waist sometimes, and that they covered the earth long. And I remember while yet young to have heard from very old men that in their youth the winters had been still colder, with deeper and longer snows. In the year 1772, thirty-seven years ago, we had a snow two feet deep in the Champain parts of this state, and three feet in the counties next below the mountains . . .
“While I lived at Washington, I kept a Diary, and by recurring to that I observe that from the winter of 1802-03 to that of 1808-09 inclusive, the average fall of snow of the seven winters was only 14½ inches, and that the ground was covered but sixteen days in each winter on average of the whole. The maximum in any one winter during that period was 21 inches fall, and 34 days on the ground, the minimum was 4½ inches fall and two days on the ground . . .
“Williams in his history of Vermont has an essay on the change in the climate of Europe, Asia and Africa.”
It’s clear, then, that the earth was warming during Jefferson’s time. It’s also clear that the climate change could not be attributed to man’s activities.
SOURCE
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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here
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10 March, 2010
Regarding "A Crack in the Code: Why software fails in scientific research, and how to fix it"
The above introduces an interesting discussion about why computer programs used in science are unreliable. I am not competent to comment at that technical level, but there is a more fundamental problem: computer models are being used for purposes beyond their competence, because science is intruding into areas beyond its competence. Modern science began when men suspected that some things might have a scientific explanation.
Surprisingly, this radical idea turned out to be true; and it has transformed the world in many ways. But modern modern scientists insist that everything has a scientific explanation. This preposterous idea is destroying all the previous advances of science. Modern science modestly limited itself to hypotheses which could be proved or disproved by scientific method; modern modern scientists feel entitled, and even obligated, to speak authoritatively to every question, including those hypotheses which cannot be tested by scientific method. We are returning to the "science" of medieval times, when the truth of a proposition was judged according to the fervent earnestness of its advocates.
The great physicist John von Neumann once disposed of a mathematical argument by saying, "With four adjustable parameters, I can fit an elephant; with five I can wiggle his trunk." When a mathematical model has as many adjustable parameters as computer climate models have, those parameters can be arbitrarily adjusted to "prove" any conceivable hypothesis. When a climate scientist says that he can eliminate natural causes as a possible explanation for observed climate change, he demonstrates breath-taking incompetence and/or breath-taking dishonesty. It is mathematically and scientifically impossible to make such a determination. The only legitimate application for such models is blind pattern recognition, by which I mean recognition of recurring patterns without understanding the underlying causes.
1) Adjust your parameters until the model matches past data; 2) test the model against future data, and refine it; 3) continue testing and refining until the model produces accurate predictions. Nobody at the IPCC is doing that. They adjust the parameters and the data to match the global warming hypothesis. That is why none of these climate models has yet made its first successful prediction.
Blind pattern recognition is not rigorous science. It has proven remarkably successful at predicting the behavior of financial markets; but any competent and honest economist will tell you, Do not bet any money that you cannot afford to lose. Your financial nest egg should be invested in a diverse array of assets designed to survive any conceivable economic event. No one can predict the stock market, and no one can predict the climate.
The uncertainties in climate data are so large that climate science is useless for policy analysis. Even if the data could be measured precisely, the uncertainties in the science and mathematics are so large that it would still be useless. When a climate scientist presumes to make radical policy recommendations based on computer models, we must add breath-taking arrogance to his aforementioned list of virtues. He seats himself on the very throne of God.
The above is an email from DuPree Moore [dupreemoore@bellsouth.net]
Russians Debunk Permafrost Scam
Siberia not melting, methane gases remain stable
Russia's leading scientists have debunked false claims by environmental activist groups and left-leaning media groups that global climate change is causing significant warming of the Siberian permafrost and resulting in a large-scale release of potent methane gas. "The world's largest frozen peat bog is melting," the August 11 issue of New Scientist proclaimed. "An area stretching for a million square kilometers across the permafrost of western Siberia is turning into a mass of shallow lakes as the ground melts."
"A vast expanse of western Siberia is undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could dramatically increase the rate of global warming," the London Guardian asserted on August 11. "If we don't take action very soon, we could unleash runaway global warming that will be beyond our control and it will lead to social, economic, and environmental devastation worldwide," the Guardian quoted a spokesman for the activist group Friends of the Earth as saying.
"Cranked-up greenhouse gases are taking the perma out of Siberia's permafrost and turning it to mud," the September 1 Arkansas Times piled on in an article titled "No Global Warming?"
None of those articles mentioned any evidence or quoted any climate experts contradicting the global warming assertions. But plenty of evidence exists. "The Russian Academy of Sciences has found that the annual temperature of soils (with seasonal variations) has been remaining stable," reported the August 22 Russian News and Information Agency. "If anything, the depth of seasonal melting has decreased slightly."
"Unscrupulous scientists are exaggerating and peddling fears about permafrost thawing and swamp methane becoming aggressive," Professor Nikolai Alexeyevsky, doctor of geography and head of the land hydrology department at Moscow State University, told the Russian News and Information Agency.
"The alarmists' misrepresentation of the Siberian permafrost is not surprising," said Pat Michaels, past president of the American Association of State Climatologists and senior fellow at the Cato Institute. "So long as governments hand out billions of dollars each year for climate research, there is no incentive to report the truth. The only sure way to keep receiving climate research funding is to keep claiming impending climate catastrophe."
"This is just another scare story," added Vladimir Melnikov, director of Russia's Institute of the Earth's Cryosphere, the world's only institute dedicated to investigating the ways in which ground water becomes ice and permafrost. "This ecological structure is balanced and is not about to harm people with gas discharges." Melnikov also disputed the claims that rapidly thawing permafrost is causing the formation of small lakes in Siberia. "Scientific findings and experience suggest that small lakes result from irregularities when laying oil and gas pipes and other engineering systems. But the scale on which new formations are appearing is small, and they do not pose any threat."
"The boundaries of the Russian permafrost zone remain virtually unchanged," agreed Yuri Izrael, director of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Climatology and Ecology. "At the same time, the permafrost is several hundred meters deep. For methane, other gases, and hydrates to escape to the surface, it would have to melt at tremendous depths, which is impossible."
SOURCE
Our glaciers are growing, not melting. More falsehoods from Al Gore
"Almost all of the ice-covered regions of the Earth are melting — and seas are rising," said Al Gore in an op-ed piece in the New York Times on February 27. Both parts of Gore's statement are false.
Contrary to Gore's assertions, almost all of the ice-covered regions of the Earth are growing, not melting — and the seas are not rising. Let's look at the facts. If you click on the words "are melting" in Gore's article, you're taken to a paper by Michael Zemp at the University of Zurich. Mr. Zemp begins his paper by warning that "glaciers around the globe continue to melt at high rates."
However, if you bother to actually read the paper, you learn that Zemp's conclusion is based on measurements of "more than 80 glaciers." Considering that the Himalayas boast more than 15,000 glaciers, a study of "more than 80 glaciers" hardly seems sufficient to warrant such a catastrophic pronouncement. Especially when you learn that of those 80 glaciers, several are growing. Growing. Not melting. "In Norway, many maritime glaciers were able to gain mass," Zemp concedes. ("Able to gain mass" means growing.) In North America, Zemp also concedes, "some positive values were reported from the North Cascade Mountains and the Juneau Ice Field." ("Displaying positive values" means growing.)
Remember, we're still coming out of the last ice age. Ice is supposed to melt as we come out of an ice age. The ice has been melting for 11,000 years. Why should today be any different? I'm guessing that most Canadians and Northern Europeans are very happy that the ice has been melting.
Unfortunately, that millenniums-long melting trend now appears to be changing. No matter how assiduously Mr. Gore tries to ignore it, almost all of the ice-covered regions of the Earth are now gaining mass. (Or, displaying positive values, if you will.) For starters, let's look at those Himalayan glaciers. In a great article, entitled "World misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown," Jonathan Leake and Chris Hastings show that the IPCC's fraudulent claims were based on "speculation" and "not supported by any formal research."
As a matter of fact, many Himalayan glaciers are growing. In a defiant act of political incorrectness, some 230 glaciers in the western Himalayas - including Mount Everest, K2 and Nanga Parbat - are actually growing. "These are the biggest mid-latitude glaciers in the world," says John Shroder of the University of Nebraska-Omaha. "And all of them are either holding still, or advancing." And get this. Eighty seven of the glaciers have surged forward since the 1960s. So much for Mr. Gore's "more than 80 glaciers."
(I don't know how many Himalayan glaciers are being monitored, but my guess would be fewer than a thousand, so it's possible that hundreds more are growing. There aren't enough glaciologists in the world to monitor them all.)
But we don't need to look to the Himalayas for growing glaciers. Glaciers are growing in the United States. Yes, glaciers are growing in the United States. Look at Washington State. The Nisqually Glacier on Mt. Rainier is growing. The Emmons Glacier on Mt. Rainier is growing. Glaciers on Glacier Peak in northern Washington are growing. And Crater Glacier on Mt. Saint Helens is now larger than it was before the 1980 eruption. (I don't think all of the glaciers in Washington or Alaska are being monitored either.)
Or look at California. All seven glaciers on California's Mount Shasta are growing. This includes three-mile-long Whitney glacier, the state's largest. Three of Mount Shasta's glaciers have doubled in size since 1950.
Or look at Alaska. Glaciers are growing in Alaska for the first time in 250 years. In May of last year, Alaska’s Hubbard Glacier was advancing at the rate of seven feet (two meters) per day - more than half-a-mile per year. And in Icy Bay, at least three glaciers advanced a third of a mile (one-half kilometer) in one year.
Oh, by the way. The Juneau Icefield, with its "positive values," covers 1,505 square miles (3,900 sq km) and is the fifth-largest ice field in the Western Hemisphere. Rather interesting to know that Gore's own source admits that the fifth-largest ice field in the Western Hemisphere is growing, don't you think?
But this mere handful of growing glaciers is just an anomaly, the erstwhile Mr. Gore would have you believe. Well, let's look at a few other countries.
Perito Moreno Glacier, the largest glacier in Argentina, is growing.
Pio XI Glacier, the largest glacier in Chile, is growing.
Glaciers are growing on Mt. Logan, the tallest mountain in Canada.
Glaciers are growing on Mt. Blanc, the tallest mountain in France.
Glaciers are growing in Norway, says the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE).
And the last time I checked, all 50 glaciers in New Zealand were growing.
But this is nothing. These glaciers are babies when you look at our planet's largest ice masses, namely, the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. Contrary to what you may have heard, both of those huge ice sheets are growing. In 2007, Antarctica set a new record for most ice extent since 1979, says meteorologist Joe D'Aleo. While the Antarctic Peninsula area has warmed in recent years, and ice near it diminished during the summer, the interior of Antarctica has been colder and the ice extent greater.
Antarctic sea ice is also increasing. According to Australian Antarctic Division glaciology program head Ian Allison, sea ice losses in west Antarctica over the past 30 years have been more than offset by increases in the Ross Sea region, just one sector of east Antarctica. The Antarctic Peninsula, where the ice has been melting, is only about 1/50th the size of east Antarctica, where the ice has been growing. Saying that all of Antarctica is melting is like looking at the climate of Oregon and saying that this applies to the entire United States.
There was not any evidence of significant change in the mass of ice shelves in east Antarctica nor any indication that its ice cap was melting, says Dr. Allison. "The only significant calvings in Antarctica have been in the west." And he cautioned that calvings of the magnitude seen recently in west Antarctica might not be unusual. "A paper to be published soon by the British Antarctic Survey in the journal Geophysical Research Letters is expected to confirm that over the past 30 years, the area of sea ice around the continent has expanded."
What about Greenland? Greenland's ice-cap has thickened slightly in recent years despite wide predictions of a thaw triggered by global warming, said a team of scientists in October 2005. The 3,000-meter (9,842-feet) thick ice-cap is a key concern in debates about climate change because a total melt would raise world sea levels by about 7 meters.
But satellite measurements show that more snow is falling and thickening the ice-cap, especially at high altitudes, according to the report in the journal Science. The overall ice thickness changes are approximately plus 5 cm (1.9 inches) per year or 54 cm (21.26 inches) over 11 years, according to the experts at Norwegian, Russian and U.S. institutes led by Ola Johannessen at the Mohn Sverdrup center for Global Ocean Studies and Operational Oceanography in Norway. Not overwhelming growth, certainly, but a far cry from the catastrophic melting that we've been lead to believe.
Think about that. The Antarctic Ice Sheet is almost twice as big as the contiguous United States. Put the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets together, and they're one hundred times bigger than all of the rest of the world's glaciers combined. More than 90 percent of the world's glaciers are growing, in other words, and all we hear about are the ones that are shrinking.
But if so many of the world's glaciers are growing, how can sea levels remain the same? They can't. The sea level models are wrong. During the last ice age, sea levels stood some 370 feet (100 meters) lower than today. That's where all of the moisture came from to create those two-mile-high sheets of ice that covered so much of the north.
And just as the ice has been melting for 11,000 years, so too were sea levels rising during those same years. But the rising has stopped. Forget those IPCC claims. Sea levels are not rising, says Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, one-time expert reviewer for the IPCC. Dr. Mörner, who received his PhD in geology in 1969, is one of the greatest - if not the greatest - sea level experts in the world today. He has worked with sea level problems for 40 years in areas scattered all over the globe. "There is no change," says Mörner. "Sea level is not changing in any way."
"There is absolutely no sea-level rise in Tuvalo," Mörner insists. "There is no change here, and there is zero sea-level rise in Bangladesh. If anything, sea levels have lowered in Bangladesh." "We do not need to fear sea-level rise," says Mörner. "(But) we should have a fear of those people who fooled us."
So there you have it. More falsehoods from Al Gore, the multimillionaire businessman who some say is set to become the world's first carbon billionaire. Our glaciers are growing, not melting — and the seas are not rising.
I agree with Dr. Mörner, but I'd make it a tad stronger. We should have a fear of those people who have conned us.
SOURCE
The wind-energy cover-up
The Obama administration works with lobbyists to distort reality
Barack Obama promised many things on his way into office. Key among these was transparency and a vow to banish lobbyists from insider roles in the policy process. Using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Competitive Enterprise Institute has confirmed that both promises are being aggressively violated.
In 2008 and 2009, Mr. Obama told Americans on no fewer than eight occasions to "think about what's happening in countries like Spain [and] Germany" to see his model for successful "green jobs" policies, and what we should expect here.
Some Spanish academics and experts on that country's wind- and solar-energy policies and outcomes took Mr. Obama up on his invitation, revealing Spain's policies to be economic and employment disasters. The political embarrassment to the administration was obvious, with White House spokesman Robert Gibbs asked about the Spanish study at a press conference, and the president hurriedly substituted Denmark for Spain in his stump speech.
Team Obama was not amused, and they decided to do something about it. The crew that campaigned on change pulled out the oldest plan in the book - attack the messenger. The U.S. government's response to foreign academics, assessing the impact in their own country of that foreign government's policies, was to come after them in a move that internal e-mails say was unprecedented. They also show it was coordinated with the lobbyists for "Big Wind" and the left-wing Center for American Progress (CAP).
What emerged was an ideological hodgepodge of curious and unsupported claims published under the name of two young non-economist wind advocates. These taxpayer-funded employees offered green dogma in oddly strident terms and, along the way, a senior Obama political appointee may well have misled Congress.
Congress was naturally curious about how the administration would end up attacking foreign academics, so Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin Republican, asked how these unprecedented offensives were launched, given that National Renewable Energy Lab and the Energy Department immediately offered conflicting statements to the media and a congressional oversight office. Mr. Sensenbrenner asked for details from Cathy Zoi, assistant secretary of energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy at the Department of Energy (DOE) and until recently, the CEO of Al Gore's climate-advocacy group. She dodged four pointed questions.
However, the documents we uncovered reveal that her office was fully aware of the answers to these questions, but elected to keep the information to itself. What transpired is difficult to discern with precision, as DOE continues to withhold numerous responsive documents. But it is clear that senior staff in Ms. Zoi's office, and another under her authority, were told by the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) of its concern over the foreign economic analysis because of the media and policymaker attention it was receiving.
The questions raised about green jobs also threatened the vast increase in Department of Energy spending to pursue green jobs. The Obama administration has poured cash into renewable-energy efficiency and renewable energy with abandon. One such program at the department has grown from a budget of $1.7 billion in 2008 to $18 billion in 2009.
What is clear is that the Department of Energy then worked with Center for American Progress and the industry lobby AWEA to produce an attack that would serve all their interests.
That may not be all because we have appealed energy's decision to withhold numerous documents. Incredibly, it refuses to release documents exchanged between it and the pressure group CAP and lobbyist AWEA on the grounds that these are "inter-agency memoranda." So, lobbyists and lavishly funded political advocacy groups are, for purposes of secrecy, mere extensions of the Obama administration. Transparency in the Age of Obama means so transparent, you can't see it.
SOURCE
Climate Wars!
By Alan Caruba
Wars come and go, cities are destroyed and rebuilt, monuments are erected, and life goes on. This is the traditional view of war, but right now the world is engaged in the latest battle of a “climate war” that has been going on since the 1970s when the Club of Rome concluded in a report titled, “The real enemy then, is humanity itself”, that the world’s population had to be reduced.
Whereas wars in the modern era have killed millions and communism as practiced in the former Soviet Union and the early decades of Red China under Chairman Mao killed millions more on a scale with which war could not compete, the advocates of population reduction rival the worst despots to have ever walked among us.
With the revelations from leaked emails between the conspirators who kept the global warming fraud going for many years, the so-called “climate scientists” who, in fact, had created phony computer models and engaged in endless studies to “prove” that global warming posed a threat to mankind, the term “Climategate” was coined to describe their collusion.
Billions are at stake so far as the “climate scientists” are concerned. They have received millions for their research in the United States and in England. Presumably other nations, too, have provided such grants and the result of the research must always be a continuation of the “global warming” fraud. Beyond the scientists are those who profit from the sale of “carbon credits” to permit “greenhouse gas emissions”, and the millions that environmental organizations such as Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club, and others rake in.
It is no surprise, then, that those who have been victimized by the fraud will see a coordinated campaign of opinion editorials in newspapers, advertisements, and other means to keep the “global warming” fraud intact. These efforts have been renamed “climate change”, but therein lies the utter mendacity of the campaign because the Earth has always passed through cycles of climate change and always will.
On February 15th, the Boston Globe published an opinion editorial by Kerry Emanuel, the director of the Program in Atmosphere, Oceans, and Climate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was filled with the usual “global warming” themes; the repetition of the lie that carbon dioxide and other minor atmospheric gases are causing a huge shift that is warming the Earth. Smoothly, the inaccuracies of climate computer models are dismissed as “uncertainties” resulting in “divergent predictions.”
The finest weather-related computer models available are unable to account for the action of clouds, an essential element in weather everywhere, nor can they include the unknown effects of countless undersea volcanoes in the world’s oceans that are another contributing factor. At best, if your local weatherman can accurately predict what will occur in the next two to four days, he’s doing fine.
Predicting what the climate—not the weather—will be decades and even centuries from now is pure fiction. It is the claim that is central to “global warming” and/or “climate change.”
In a rebuttal to Emanuel’s opinion editorial, Bill Gray, Professor Emeritus, Colorado State University, noted that “A high percentage of meteorologists and/or climate scientists do not agree that the climate changes we have seen are mostly man-made. Thousands of us think that the larger part of the climate changes we have observed over the last century are of natural origin.” He added, “Over 31,000 American scientists have recently signed a petition advising the U.S. not to sign any fossil fuel reduction treaty.”
Myron Ebell, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has just released a statement based on the release of still more emails between desperate “climate scientists” whose careers depend on the “global warming” fraud.
“According to recently disclosed e-mails from a National Academies of Science listserv, prominent climate scientists affiliated with the U.S. National Academies of Science, have been planning a public campaign to paper over the damaged reputation of global warming alarmism.”
The emails explored the ways the public could be distracted from the revelations of Climategate and enticed back to believing that “global warming” is based in real science and occurring. Among the suggestions were “Op eds in the NY Times and other national newspapers would also be great.”
Referring to this as a climate war is no exaggeration. One email said, “Most of our colleagues don’t seem to grasp that we’re not in a gentlepersons’ debate, we’re in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules.” One of those rules most certainly is to tell the truth!
What the public has never grasped is that this is not a science-based war. It is entirely political in nature and the Green's enemy has been the resource industries, oil, natural gas, and coal that provide the means by which energy is generated for industrial use and for societies that depend on electricity to function. The subtext of the war is the deliberate destruction of human life on the planet on a mass scale.
That explains why it is especially troubling that President Obama continues to refer to global warming as real and advocates “cap-and-trade” legislation, the largest tax on energy use in the history of mankind. It is the reason he continues to divert millions to “clean energy” and “green jobs”, neither of which have ever proven to equal traditional energy sources or provide sufficient employment to merit support.
So now the climate wars shift into a new phase, one intended to obfuscate and confuse the public again in the quest to foist the greatest fraud and attack on mankind in human history
SOURCE
Coral reefs safe after all
Hoagy will be disappointed
Reef ecosystems were able to persist through massive environmental changes imposed by sharply falling sea levels during previous ice ages, an international scientific team has found. This provides new hope for their capacity to endure the increasing human impacts forecast for the 21st century.
In the world's first study of what happened to coral reefs when ocean levels sank to their lowest recorded level – over 120 metres below today's levels – a study carried out on eight fossil reefs in Papua New Guinea's Huon Gulf region has concluded that a rich diversity of corals managed to survive, although they were different in composition to the corals under more benign conditions.
“Of course, sea levels then were falling – and today they are rising," said Professor John Pandolfi of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and The University of Queensland. "But if we want to know how corals cope with hostile conditions, then we have to study what happens under all circumstances. “We've seen what happens to corals in the past when sea levels rose and conditions were favourable to coral growth: we wanted to see what happened when they fell and conditions were adverse. “When sea levels drop you get a catastrophic reduction in coral habitat and a loss of connectivity between reefs.
In the Huon region, the team found, coral reefs survived the hard times low of sea levels with as much richness of species – but with a different composition to what they had during the good times. “As a rule the coral colonies during the period of low sea levels were closer to the sea floor and slower-growing in comparison with times of high sea levels.” “What we have found suggests that reef systems are able to survive adverse conditions given suitable shallow rocky habitat.
"An interesting finding of this study is that complex coral ecosystems were maintained during the less optimal periods of low sea level. These may have been critical to the re-establishment of nearby reefs once environmental conditions began to improve.” “The fossil record shows that reefs have been remarkably successful in surviving large environmental disturbances.
More HERE (I have left out the propaganda and just kept the factual bits)
Journal abstract follows:
Community dynamics of Pleistocene coral reefs during alternative climatic regimes
By Danika Tager et al.
Reef ecosystems built during successive periods of Pleistocene sea level rise have shown remarkable persistence in coral community structure, but little is known of the ecological characteristics of reef communities during periods of low sea stands or sea level falls. We sampled the relative species abundance of coral, benthic foraminifera, and calcareous red algae communities from eight submerged coral reefs in the Huon Gulf, Papua New Guinea, which formed during successive sea level fall and lowstand periods over the past 416 kyr. We found that dissimilarity in coral species composition increased significantly with increasing time between reef-building events. However, neither coral diversity nor the taxonomic composition of benthic foraminifera and calcareous red algae assemblages varied significantly over time. The taxonomic composition of coral communities from lowstand reefs was significantly different from that of highstand reefs previously reported from the nearby Huon Peninsula. We interpret the community composition and temporal dynamics of lowstand reefs as a result of shifting energy regimes in the Huon Gulf, and differences between low and highstand reefs as a result of differences in the interaction between biotic and environmental factors between the Huon Gulf and Huon Peninsula. Regardless of the exact processes driving these trends, our study represents the first glimpse into the ecological dynamics of coral reefs during low sea level stands when climatic conditions for reef growth were much different and less optimal than during previously studied highstand periods.
SOURCE
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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here
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9 March, 2010
A Bright, Shining Green Lie
Home weatherization has neither created many jobs nor weatherized many homes
A year ago, President Barack Obama peered into our economic future and saw foam sealant and weatherstripping. In the midst of a punishing recession, Obama would wield that incomparable jobs-creating tool, the caulk gun. What the Works Progress Administration was to Franklin Roosevelt, the government-funded weatherization of homes would be to Obama.
“If you allocate money to weatherize homes,” Obama effused to an audience in Elkhart, Ind., “the homeowner gets the benefit of lower energy bills. You right away put people back to work, many of whom in the construction industry and in the housing industry are out of work right now.” And it’s a step to “a new energy future.”
Obama was hawking another one of his cost-free, best-of-all-worlds scenarios, one that has been exposed in all its self-deluding inanity in the space of a year. As a writer parodying such magical thinking long ago observed, “Sun-beams may be extracted from cucumbers, but the process is tedious.” A sun-beam extraction program might have been just as effective, and nearly as timely.
Obama poured $5 billion into weatherization as part of last year’s stimulus and wanted to spend billions more in a second stimulus. The Department of Energy managed to get the money to the states, where it has swelled the coffers for weatherization and done little else.
According to a Department of Energy inspector general report last month, “only 2 of the 10 highest funded recipients completed more than 2 percent of planned units.” New York had completed 280 out of 45,400 planned units as of December, Texas had completed 0 of 33,908, and California 12 out of 43,400. That’s 292 homes in three states with a total population of roughly 80 million.
So much for the 87,000 jobs the administration promised “right away.” The inspector general report is unsparing: “The job creation impact of what was considered to be one of the Department’s most ‘shovel ready’ projects has not materialized,” and neither have “the significant reductions in energy consumption.” Besides that, weatherization has been a stimulative triumph.
More HERE
What both Obama and the British Conservatives don't want you to know about green jobs and green energy
Green jobs are a waste of space, a waste of money, a lie, a chimera. You know that. I know that. We’re familiar with the report by Dr Gabriel Calzada Alvarez of the Rey Juan Carlos University in Spain which shows that for every “green job” that is created another 2.2 jobs are LOST in the real economy.
We also know that alternative energy is a fraud – only viable through enormous government (ie taxpayer subsidy) and utterly incapable of answering anything more than a fraction of our energy needs. As Shannon Love puts it here:
"Here’s a fact you won’t see mentioned in the public policy debate over “alternative” energy: There exists no alternative energy source, no combination of alternative energy sources, and no system of combinations of alternative energy sources that can fully replace a single, coal fired electric plant built with 1930s era technology. Nada. Zero. Zilch."
So why are our political leaders setting out quite deliberately to deceive us?
There have many disgustingly revealing stories this week about the dubious practices of the Climate Fear Promotion lobby, but for me the most damning of all was Chris Horner’s scoop at Pajamas Media concerning high level cover-ups by the Obama administration. Like his soul mate Dave Cameron on this side of the pond, Obama finds the narrative about global warming so compelling and moving that he doesn’t want it spoiled with any inconvenient truths regarding green jobs and green energy.
Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has discovered that when two European reports came out – the Spanish one above; and another one from Denmark on the inefficiency of wind farms – the Obama administration recruited left-wing lobbyists to attack them.
After two studies refuted President Barack Obama’s assertions regarding the success of Spain’s and Denmark’s wind energy programs, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request reveals the Department of Energy turned to George Soros and to wind industry lobbyists to attack the studies.We see something similar going on here in Britain. The taxpayer funded Quango The Carbon Trust is continually pumping out propaganda on behalf of the powerful wind energy lobby; as too is the BBC which cheerfully funded a political broadcast (masquerading as a cri de coeur) by Green activist George Moonbat on its The Daily Politics show earlier this week. In December it was discovered that civil servants working for the government had suppressed evidence that wind farms damage health and disrupt sleep.
Via the FOIA request, the Competitive Enterprise Institute has learned that the Department of Energy — specifically the office headed by Al Gore’s company’s former CEO, Cathy Zoi — turned to George Soros’ Center for American Progress and other wind industry lobbyists to help push Obama’s wind energy proposals.
The FOIA request was not entirely complied with, and CEI just filed an appeal over documents still being withheld. In addition to withholding many internal communications, the administration is withholding communications with these lobbyists and other related communications, claiming they constitute “inter-agency memoranda.” This implies that, according to the DoE, wind industry lobbyists and Soros’s Center for American Progress are — for legal purposes — extensions of the government.
Do our political leaders think we’re stupid? Or so supine and malleable that we simply won’t mind being lied to if it’s for our “own good”?
SOURCE (See the original for links)
The philosophy of climate change
Still incoherent. Specific events and the short term matter when it suits Warmists but not otherwise
In my previous column, we saw that defenders of Global Warming are trying to have it both ways when it comes to finding confirmations of their theory. They appeal to opposite sorts of natural phenomena as confirming evidence: Lack of snow in Vancouver, receding glaciers and recent milder winters on the one hand and this year’s record-setting snows on the other.
This raises the question whether they would take any observational evidence as disconfirming their theory. If not, then we may wonder if global warming is nothing more than pseudo-science.
A response taken now by some defenders is that what they are really talking about is climate change, not weather change. This being the case, as meteorologist Jeff Masters points out, “no single weather event can be blamed on climate change.” And no single weather event — such as Snowmageddon — can be cited as disconfirming it.
His point is that the predictions made by climate change proponents are not the simple “All swans are white” sorts of predictions discussed by Popper and countering the theory is not as simple as just finding one non-white swan to prove it false. Rather, they are statistical in nature.
As Masters notes, “one can ‘load the dice’ in favor of events that used to be rare — or unheard of — if the climate is changing to a new state… [T]he dice have been loaded in favor of more intense Nor'easters for the U.S. Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.” According to the hypothesis, Climate Change predicts no specific intense storm but only an increase in their frequency in the long run.
Consistent with such long-term statistical predictions are short-term anomalies. Flipping a coin one thousand times will produce “heads” on half the throws. But somewhere in the process a series of throws may come up “tails” twenty times in a row. Such an anomaly does not necessarily overthrow the long-run prediction.
This fact has recently given a haven of refuge to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Administrator Jane Lubchenco. NOAA’s mission purportedly includes, “'informing climate change mitigation and adaptation.”
Asked recently about East Anglia University’s Dr. Phil Jones’ admission that “for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming,” Lubchenco responded “that it is inappropriate to look at any particular short period of time to discern the long-term trend.” She went on to say that one could find competing trends if one singles out any ten or fifteen-year period in the last century but “that longer history shows unequivocal increases in global average temperatures.”
Now wait a minute. This is the same Jane Lubchenco who warned, of “an ecological tsunami [in the oceans] of unprecedented proportions.” Elsewhere, when asked about climate change‘s effects on ocean life she replied, “as a result of the warming waters … corals are bleaching with increased frequency... it also is melting ice in the Arctic, and many species that are dependent on ice for their homes, from polar bears to ice seals… are becoming increasingly threatened with extinction.”
Her agency recently released a report on how climate change will affect the US in the next 20 years or so, which predicted a reduction in Western mountain snowpacks adversely affecting water supplies, more heat related illnesses and deaths due to rising average temperatures and a rise in respiratory diseases.
But if we are now talking about climate change as a long-run phenomenon, shouldn’t it be illegitimate to make such short range predictions? And is it not as questionable to refer to climate change as the explanation for a specific event like corals bleaching or melting Arctic ice, as it would be to point to a specific weather event like missing snows in Vancouver as explainable by it?
Lubchenco goes a step further, demanding immediate action. She said earlier this year in a Yale interview: “Climate change is real, it’s causing changes in our own backyard… and therefore there is urgency in moving ahead with reducing heat-trapping pollution as soon as possible.”
Again, if we are talking about it as a long-term phenomenon, where even a fifteen-year cooling period is not supposed to be inconsistent with its gradual development, then surely the long-developing nature of climate significantly undermines the case for urgent, immediate action.
Lubchenco would clearly like to have it both ways and construe climate change in whatever way best suits her immediate needs, a strategy which seems to be incoherent. It is certainly no basis for formulating any public policy radically reducing carbon emissions in the near term.
SOURCE
Some nutty biologists pontificate on climate
Some comments below from physicist Lubos Motl
Some people seem to be unwilling to accept that the era of the global warming panic that couldn't even be questioned is over.
In 1967, Paul Ehrlich predicted that hundreds of millions of people would starve to death in the 1970s and 1980s. Later, he updated his prediction and argued that most of the U.S. population would starve to death before 2000. His whole career has been built on making absolutely preposterous statements of this kind.
Of course, he always had to suffer by the knowledge that most people have always realized that he is a kook, a lunatic obsessed with doomsdays, and a parasite on the Academic system. Is there a method for him to prove that he was right and most Americans would prematurely disappear from the world? Maybe.
The Washington Times has revealed e-mails showing that right now, he may have finally found out the magic formula. Together with Stephen Schneider and others, such as Paul Falkowski, the director of an energy institute at Rutgers who wants to replace fossil fuels by biofuels from duckweeds (aquatic plants) that will be growing on the surface of all ponds and oceans in the world (yes, he's another nut), Ehrlich decided that it's time to destroy the climate skeptics - i.e. most of the world's population. One of the participants of the project described its goal as: "an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach to gut the credibility of skeptics."
Very nice. I just wonder whether the participants have also found a method to do these things while hiding that they're a criminal cabal that deserves to be put in jail if not on an electric chair.
The number of people who continue to be as mad as Paul Ehrlich is strictly finite but it is still much greater than one. For example, Mr David Adam, a green ink-spiller in the Guardian, has made a "shocking" revelation: "Climate emails inquiry: Energy consultant linked to physics body's submission"
If you don't understand the "juice" of the title, he is complaining that it must be a sin for the Institute of Physics to have listened to one expert in the energy industry - among many witnesses they have listened to! Holy crap. If I were doing such things where the practical consequences of possible policies - mainly for the energy industry - are far more important than the underlying science as a pure theory, then most of the people I would invite would be economists or energy experts.
Mr Adam, do you really think that in March 2010, it's still possible to defend the idea that energy experts are devils who can't ever be listened to or invited anywhere? Do you want to defend a complete isolation - or elimination? - of the energy companies? Have you lost your mind? Is The Guardian aware that they're employing a crazy person?
I can imagine that this poor guy will soon complain that he is getting unfriendly e-mails and exchanges with the other people. Will you really be surprised? You are trying to attack the dignity - if not the existence - of one of the most important sectors of the economy that everyone else needs to survive. What else would you expect than unfavorable messages if not something worse, moron?
It's kind of amazing that they don't see what's important here. All of their focus is on the tricks how to brainwash the people and force them to believe the "best science" that this group can offer. But their "best science" is no longer good enough.
All the brainwashing tricks and types of frauds, cherr-picking, censorship, lies, libels, and distortions have already been used by them in the past: but they won't work again because most of the public has learned something during the last 3 months and has already acquired a kind of "immunity" against these types of deception that they won't "unlearn" anytime soon.
Selected, unfiltered, and one-sided ads won't help them in any way because it will be clear that these ads fail to be impartial. And the detailed content won't impress anyone, either. That's because they don't have any real counter-arguments against the observations revealed in the last 3 months (and before that) - simply because no such counter-arguments exist. They're not interested in the content - how the climate actually works. They're only interested in the methods how to promote a particular "type" of reasoning and particular results. It has worked for years. But it won't work again.
They can't fix this "subtle" problem by collecting $15,000 after an e-mail conversation. The problem is much deeper than something that can be bought for $15,000. The problem is that their lives are built upon lies and this fact has been getting increasingly self-evident to everyone.
SOURCE. See also here and here
Treason Is A Matter Of Dates
This observation, famously made by Talleyrand at the Congress of Vienna as the powers debated the fate of the turncoat King of Saxony, reminded the crowned heads of Europe that all of them had at one time or another worked with Napoleon. Talleyrand himself had served the emperor as foreign minister and trusted ally before switching to the other side as Napoleon’s power waned — and his megalomania grew.
These days, it’s The New York Times that is redefining treason. Three weeks ago, anyone who pointed at the lack of public confidence in climate science was aiding and abetting those horrible climate ‘deniers.’ Treason against Planet Earth! You had to be some kind of dread ‘right wing blogger’ or talk radio host to point out that blunders and arrogance had undermined the credibility of climate scientists and ended any short term chance of serious global agreement on urgent measures to stop global warming.
But a story this morning by John Broder gently lets Times readers know that something has gone badly wrong.
WASHINGTON — For months, climate scientists have taken a vicious beating in the media and on the Internet, accused of hiding data, covering up errors and suppressing alternate views. Their response until now has been largely to assert the legitimacy of the vast body of climate science and to mock their critics as cranks and know-nothings.Admit mistakes? Open up their data? Change the way the work? You mean there was something wrong with the way climate science was operating last year? Is the Times telling us that the climate scientists–on the basis of whose work the whole world is debating complex and far-reaching changes in its economic structure and political governance–were using slipshod and careless procedures that need to be fixed?
But the volume of criticism and the depth of doubt have only grown, and many scientists now realize they are facing a crisis of public confidence and have to fight back. Tentatively and grudgingly, they are beginning to engage their critics, admit mistakes, open up their data and reshape the way they conduct their work.
Gosh, one has to ask, if these terrible things were going on for such a long time, why didn’t the New York Times notice this earlier on? Why didn’t the New York Times break this important story back when it was news, rather than lamely sweeping up at the end of the parade? Could it be that a climate of politically-correct group-think inhibited the editors and reporters at the country’s newspaper of record from recognizing a one of the major stories of the decade? Could the environmental writers at the Times be just a teensy bit too close to their sources?
The Times seems to have forgotten the most important aspect of the news business. For years now ’skeptic’ has been a dirty word at the Times when the subject of climate change comes up. Excuse me, but reporters are supposed to be skeptics. They are supposed to be cynical, hard bitten people who trust their mothers — but cut the cards. They are supposed to think that scientists are probably too much in love with their data, that issue advocates have hidden agendas, that high-toned rhetoric is often a cover for naked self interest, that bloviating politicians have cynical motives and that heroes, even Nobel Prize laureates, have feet of clay. That is their job; it is why we respect them and why we pay attention to what they write.
Reporters are not supposed to be wide-eyed gee-whiz college kids believing everything they hear and using the news columns of the paper to promote a social agenda. They are wet blankets, not cheerleaders, Eeyores, not Piglets and they can safely leave all the advocacy and flag-waving to the editorial writers and the op-ed pages.
This is not just a question of liberal bias. The same wide-eyed gee-whiz culture shaped much of the reporting on the run-up to the Iraq War. Maybe the word we are looking for when trying to describe what’s wrong with the mainstream press isn’t ‘liberal’ — maybe the term is something like ‘credulous’ or ‘naive.’ The gradual substitution of ‘professional journalists’ for the old hard boiled hacks may have given us a generation of journalists who are used to trusting reputable authority. They honestly think that people with good credentials and good manners don’t lie.
Today’s journalists are much too well-bred and well-connected to stand there in the crowd shouting “The emperor has no clothes!” They’ve worked with the tailors, they have had long background interviews with the tailors, they’ve been present for some of the fittings. Of course the emperor’s new clothes are fantastic; only those rude and uncouth ‘clothing deniers’ still have any doubts.
Meanwhile, over on the aforementioned op-ed pages, our old friend Al Gore is still crying a river of denial, blaming everyone but himself for the abject failure of the world to accept his views without checking the facts for themselves. If the New York Times and its peers had come at this story with more skepticism and rigor from the beginning, climate scientists would have realized long ago that if they hope to convince a skeptical world they need to be ultra-careful, ultra-cautious and even ultra-conservative in their public statements and recommendations. They would have understood long ago that because their science is important, they have to do it more carefully and more publicly than other people. That may be harsh and it may be ‘unfair’ in some sense, but when you are dealing with the interests of billions of people you have to expect a little bit of scrutiny — though not, apparently, from the New York Times.
The very idea that critics would have to use the Freedom of Information Act to pry back-up data from a scientist on a matter of great public importance is insane. That data should have been out there years ago, without anyone having to ask. If it’s considered ‘normal’ in climate science for researchers to keep their raw data under lock and key, and refuse to subject it to skeptical and hostile review, then climate science isn’t science.
The Times and its peers in the mainstream press need to ask themselves why something this obvious, this important, this newsworthy passed them by. If they don’t figure that out and make some wrenching changes, they will continue to watch helplessly as their credibility and readership inexorably shrink.
The meltdown that worries me most in this whole dismal story isn’t the meltdown of the Himalayan glaciers. It’s the evident meltdown of basic journalistic standards among a whole generation of reporters and editors that keeps me up late at night; I don’t just worry about what they missed on this story, or on the Iraq story–I wonder what else they are missing every day.
John Broder’s story this morning is good as far as it goes, but it looks more and more as if our greatest newspaper has been so wholly conquered by the spirit of enlightened upper-middle-class progressivism that it has lost the ability to view its own assumptions with the necessary skepticism. That is terrible news; the world is changing rapidly in ways that simply don’t fit the thought templates that upper-middle-class baby boomers developed over the last twenty years. Increasingly, the mental map that shapes the way the Times looks at the world simply fails to match what is happening out there, yet the Times seems less able than ever to see that.
Before you can report an inconvenient truth you have to be able to recognize it; this is the test that the Times‘ coverage of the ‘climategate’ story has failed.
SOURCE
Global climate battle plays out in World Bank
The United States and Britain are threatening to withhold support for a $3.75 billion World Bank loan for a coal-fired plant in South Africa, expanding the battleground in the global debate over who should pay for clean energy. The opposition by the bank's two largest members has raised eyebrows among those who note that the two advanced economies are allowing development of coal-powered plants in their own countries even as they raise concerns about those in poorer countries.
While the loan is still likely to be approved on April 6 by the World Bank board, it has revealed the deep fissures between the world's industrial powers and developing countries over tackling climate change. Both camps failed to reach a new deal in Copenhagen in December on a global climate agreement because of differences over emissions targets and who should pay for poorer nations to green their economies.
Some $3 billion of the loan to South African power utility Eskom will fund the bulk of the 4,800-megawatt Medupi coal-fired plant in the northern Limpopo region and is critical to easing the country's chronic power shortages that brought the economy to its knees in 2008. The rest of the money will go toward renewables and energy efficiency projects.
The battle playing out in the World Bank was prompted by new guidance issued by the U.S. Treasury to multilateral institutions in December on coal-based power projects, which infuriated developing countries including China and India.
The guidance directs U.S. representatives to encourage "no or low carbon energy" options prior to a coal-based choice, and to assist borrowers in finding additional resources to make up the costs if an alternative to coal is more expensive.
In a letter to World Bank President Robert Zoellick, board representatives from Africa, China and India said such actions "highlighted an unhealthy subservience of the decision-making processes in the bank to the dictates of one member country".
Eskom has proposed to develop Medupi with the latest supercritical "clean coal" and carbon storage technologies available on the market, which is used by most rich countries. Still, Medupi will be a major polluter that could make it harder for South Africa to meet its emissions targets.
A U.S. Treasury official told Reuters the United States was in the process of reviewing the Eskom proposal and will develop a position that "is consistent with administration policy and with facts surrounding the project."
World Bank Vice President for Africa, Obiageli Ezekwesili, said South Africa's energy security was key because the country's growth, or lack of it, was felt throughout Africa. "There is no viable alternative to safeguard Africa's energy security at this particular time," she told Reuters. "This is a transitional investment that they are making toward a green economy and that should count for something."
But the politically connected Center for American Progress in Washington argued in a report last week that the World Bank is a standard-setter for development banks and should push sustainable economic development models in client countries. "This is a problem for an institution with the moral and financial responsibility to foster large-scale investment in sustainable economic development," it said.
More HERE
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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here
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8 March, 2010
IPCC Science Designed For Propaganda
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was specifically designed by Maurice Strong as a political vehicle to further his objective of crippling the industrial nations
Scientists at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) built a dam to contain a lake full of dirty water. Someone behind the dam drilled a hole and sprang a leak. The flow is small but growing and the color of the water gets dirtier and dirtier and the size of the hole will increase as the extent of the corruption expands. Now a second major leak has developed in a different area as people dig through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Reports. The structure of the organization made this almost inevitable. However, the structure was necessary to achieve the political rather than a scientific goal.
Bureaucratic Structure
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was specifically designed by Maurice Strong as a political vehicle to further his objective of crippling the industrial nations. An acknowledged master of bureaucratic systems he set up every segment of the organization for the maximum public relations effect. This meant emphasis on emotional impact, especially by exploiting fear. The first need was to direct and control the science. It was achieved at the 1985 meeting in Villach Austria chaired by Canadian bureaucrat Gordon McBean with Phil Jones and Tom Wigley from CRU in attendance. The second need was for maximizing the fear factor to force political action.
Early stories from the leaked emails identified the obvious illegal and unacceptable activities that do not require understanding of climate science. These related to the work of the CRU members who effectively controlled the chapters on atmospheric chemistry, paleoclimatic reconstruction of past climate conditions, the computer models, and the Summary for Policymakers (SPM). Their objective was to prove their hypothesis that human CO2 was causing global warming and subsequently climate change. Apart from the SPM all of their work was concentrated in Working Group I (WGI) to produce the Physical Science Basis Report.
This Report is then accepted, without question, by Working Group II (Impacts, Adaptation and Variability) and Working Group III (Mitigation of Climate Change) and becomes the basis of their research. Working Group II is the Report that has the greatest number of works that are now being exposed as non peer-reviewed and in some instances unpublished. They assume warming is going to occur and the rate will increase. This means that all the studies are focused in a single direction and taken to extremes. Glaciers will melt rapidly. Sea level will rise quickly. Drought will increase in intensity. (Here and here)
This last argument is an example of how wrong these reports are. Increasing droughts is counterintuitive because with warming evaporation increases putting more moisture in the atmosphere and increasing the precipitation potential.
Working Group II: Speculation As Fact Equals Corruption
There are several problems with the articles cited, especially in the WGII Reports. First the IPCC pushed the peer review issue to extremes by claiming they only used such articles, then peer reviewing each other’s work. They used the issue to divert skeptics by telling them to get peer reviewed publications knowing they could control it. When one article by-passed their guard and was published by Geophysical Research Letters they got the editor fired. Now we discover they used a multitude of non-reviewed articles often from very biased sources such as the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace as references. Second they used these articles to apply political pressure, yet the entire process claims to be unbiased and apolitical. IPCC Chair Pachauri gave this as the reason for including the false Himalayan ice-melting reports. Pachauri is now in defense of his actions but the extent of his involvement is so bad that even Greenpeace are calling for his dismissal.
Pachauri replaced Watson as Chair and the CRU were glad to see him go. Mike Hulme to Phil Jones on April 22, 2002 said, “Watson has perhaps thrown his weight about too much in the past.” He then added, “The science is well covered by Susan Solomon in WGI, so why not get an engineer/economist since many of the issues now raised by CC are more to do with energy and money, than natural science.” In other words, we have the science controlled but the deceptions need to carry over to the political and economic arena.
The irony of Pachauri’s involvement is that the CRU emails disclose his appointment was of concern to the gang because he was seen as a President Bush appointee. On 19 April 2002 Tom Wigley wrote to Phil Jones passing on an Executive Summary that read, “the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) plenary voted for Dr. Rajendra Pachauri as the sole chair of the IPCC. Dr. Pachauri, an economist and engineer, will replace Dr. Robert Watson, an atmospheric chemist, as chair of the IPCC. This outcome was actively sought by the Bush Administration at the behest of the most conservative elements of the fossil fuel industry. This development threatens to undermine the scientific credibility and integrity of the IPCC and may weaken the job this extraordinary body has done to bring the world’s attention to one of the most pressing environmental problems.”
Attempts to Put Fingers in The Dam
The leaks in the dam they built at CRU and the IPCC get bigger and bigger. Only a fraction of the dirty water has escaped but will continue to emerge. Meanwhile the cover-up has begun. Pennsylvania State has a whitewash with an internal review committee. They also announce they are conveniently not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. They did not interview major players in the fiasco including Steve McIntyre who discovered Michael Mann’s hockey stick fraud. In England the temporary director of the CRU says Jones will be completely vindicated and reinstated. The person appointed to do the English investigation has a history of total commitment to the global warming alarmists view. Some of the IPCC affiliates, such as Andrew Weaver are climbing out of the lake and running for the trees. The mainstream media continues to ignore the issue, but the millions of eyes and minds on the Internet are exposing the cracks in the dam and the sewage that is emerging.
SOURCE
Clash over 'global warming' ratcheted up another degree
Congressman wants funding stopped
The clash over "global warming" has been ratcheted up another degree this week, with one member of Congress demanding U.S. taxpayer funding for the research be halted and scientists who have been accused of slipshod and deceptive work planning a campaign of retaliation against their critics.
The controversy moved to the front burner late last year when a series of e-mails was hacked from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Britain that indicate scientists were hiding and manipulating data and trying to marginalize critics.
The revelations were significant, because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency signed two findings Dec. 7 that concluded greenhouse gases in the atmosphere "threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations." The EPA's rulings could mean thousands of dollars in additional taxes for individual consumers.
Now, Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Joe Barton, R-Texas, is citing the doubts about the integrity of "climate change" science in a letter asking for an accounting of U.S. taxpayer support for the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC. The U.S. since 1994 has given some $50 million to the panel, and contributions under Obama now have doubled.
Barton, writing to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, asked the State Department to stop any contributions until an up-to-date audit is released. "In recent months, the IPCC has come under significant criticism for the quality of its principal work product: the periodic assessments of the causes of climate change and related impacts from a changing climate," Barton wrote. "Various reports have identified problems concerning quality-control procedures, peer review, and political influence on the assessment writeups, raising serious questions about the scientific integrity of the enterprise," he said.
The congressman asked Clinton to provide details of U.S. funding and state what controls – if any – have been placed on the funds....
More here
Global warming plan could leave humans extinct
Forget climate change — the real threat to the planet and all of us riding on it comes from screwball scientists and their schemes to “save” us from nonexistent threats. The latest plot sounds like it might have been hatched by a Bond villain: a series of simulated volcanic explosions to fill the atmosphere with a manmade chemical sunblock that would shield the entire planet.
Can you imagine anyone saying this stuff with a straight face? Yet that’s just one of a number of dead-serious proposals in the growing field of “geoengineering.” Another scheme involves spraying seawater into the sky around the planet to create more clouds, lowering the global temperature. I hope you’ve invested in a good umbrella.
What’s even more disturbing is that our government is actually taking this nonsense seriously. The National Science Foundation just awarded $382,000 of YOUR money to University of Montana researchers just to study the ethics of geoengineering.
They should have asked me — I could solve that one for free: Ethics won’t matter one whit if we’re all dead after scientists blow their volcanic loads and dump the sea into the sky.
I wasn’t around when the dinosaurs got wiped out — I’m not that old — but the leading theory says it started with a meteor impact. The space rock itself didn’t kill off the creatures…instead, the real culprit was a massive cloud of dust kicked up by the impact, blocking out the sun. Sound familiar?
I’m not convinced the climate is changing in the first place — and even if it is, it’s certainly not because of anything we’ve done. The planet’s a lot older and stronger than us. But if we give in to this manufactured panic and let the mad scientists engineer the environment for us, we’ll go the way of the dinosaurs ourselves.
SOURCE
Bali-Hoo: U.N Still Pushing for Global Environmental Control
Despite the debacle of the failed Copenhagen climate change conference last December, the United Nations is pressing full speed ahead with a plan for a greatly expanded system of global environmental governance and for a multitrillion-dollar economic transfer scheme to ignite the creation of a "global green economy." In other words: Copenhagen without the authority — yet — of Copenhagen.
The world body even has chosen a time and a place for the culmination of the process: a World Summit on Sustainable Development to be held in Rio de Janeiro in 2012, the 20th anniversary of the famed "Earth Summit" that gave focus and urgency to the world environmentalist movement.
The 2012 summit date is significant for another reason: It marks the end of the legal term of agreement for the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions, which includes carbon reduction targets, and provided the legal basis for an international cap-and-trade market for carbon, centered in Europe. The U.S. first signed then backed away from the Kyoto deal without ratifying it; until its apparent collapse, the comprehensive Copenhagen deal was intended to include the U.S. and supplant Kyoto with a new, legally binding regime.
The new Rio summit will end, according to U.N. documents obtained by Fox News, with a "focused political document" presumably laying out the framework and international commitments to a new Green World Order.
Just exactly what that environmental order will look like, and the extent of the immense financial commitments needed to produce it, are under discussion this week at a special session in Bali, Indonesia, of the United Nations Environment Program's 58-nation "Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environmental Forum," which oversees UNEP's operations.
The GC/GMEF, as it is known, is made up of environmental ministers and top-level bureaucrats from a roster of supervising nations — the U.S. is one of them — and its meeting is surrounded by a galaxy of environmentalist non-government organizations (NGOs) and environmental journalists from around the world.
Idyllic Bali is a favored venue for U.N. environmental meetings, in part because of its seclusion from too many outside eyes, and because its Pacific location and small size make it a highly congenial hothouse for environmental enthusiasm. In 2007, it served as a launching pad for the Bali Action Plan, which laid the negotiating basis for the Copenhagen treaty process.
The latest Bali session runs from Feb. 24 to 26, and is accompanied by a welter of other UNEP activity ranging from sessions on international waste management and chemical disposal, to the start of a process aimed at a new international treaty covering the storage and disposal of environmental mercury.
But the major topics are a global system of governance and what amounts to the next stage of a radical transformation of the world economic and social order, in the name of saving the planet.
Alongside that, as always, are discussions of vast sums of money that should flow to developing nations to help them make the transition to the new, greener world. As one of the papers written in advance of the meeting to "stimulate discussion" puts it, "the situation ... presents genuine opportunities for a dramatic shift from what can be termed 'business as usual.'"
For the anonymous bureaucrats who wrote the discussion papers, "business as usual" apparently means the current world economy, which the anonymous authors disparagingly term the "brown economy," or the "current dominant economic model." It is, according to the UNEP documents, a model in crisis, "which currently consumes more biomass than the Earth produces on a sustainable basis," and also "depletes natural capital" and "risks perpetuating and exacerbating persistent poverty and distributional disparities."
The new green economy under discussion at Bali will be something very different: For starters, it is much more vague, and as far as the discussion paper authors are concerned, it will stay that way.
The paper paints the coming green order in nebulous and utopian terms. It "implies the decoupling of resource use and environmental impacts from economic growth." It involves "substantially increased investment in green sectors, supported by enabling policy reforms." The investments will "provide the mechanism for the reconfiguration of businesses, infrastructure and institutions, and for adoption of sustainable consumption and production processes." It will lead to "more green and decent jobs, reduced energy and material intensities in production processes, less waste and pollution, and significantly reduced greenhouse-gas emissions."
But when it comes to measuring the achievement of those goals, the paper says, "it is counter-productive to develop generic green economy indicators applicable to all countries given differences in natural, human and economic resources." In the process of turning brown to green, "a green economy in one country may look quite dissimilar to a green economy in another country."
All of which may make judging the value of investment in the ecological transformation difficult to evaluate, except for insiders. But then, the paper suggests that the world may have an additional governing structure composed of exactly those insiders. As the paper puts it:
"Moving towards a green economy would also provide an opportunity to re-examine national and global governance structures and consider whether such structures allow the international community to respond to current and future environmental and development challenges and to capitalize on emerging opportunities."
The discussion paper, published — but not distributed — on Dec. 14, 2009, assumes that the goal of the green economic transformation is the same as that of the ill-fated Copenhagen conference: a 50 percent reduction in global carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. That, the paper says, will require a staggering $45 trillion dollar to accomplish — much of it in transfers from rich nations to poorer ones.
The paper, however, paints that as a bargain — "an average yearly investment of just over $1 trillion." About half of that would go for "replacing conventional technologies with low-carbon, environmentally sound alternatives."
Much more HERE
Energy Suicide: Unplugging America
By Alan Caruba
What was that most homeowners and apartment dwellers most feared in the recent record-breaking blizzard that hit the northeast? The answer is losing electricity and that is why the news of the event was always filled with reports of what towns had lost electricity due to downed tree limbs. This was followed by news of how quickly the utilities were making repairs.
Simply stated, when you lose electricity, you lose light and warmth, and you are instantly back to the dark ages before magical power flowed into your home through outlets throughout your house or apartment. No power leaves people searching for flashlights or, if they have planned for it, firing up a generator. That is why energy is so critical, not just to our everyday lives, but to the future of the nation. It is, in many respects, life itself.
On March 4, yet another environmental organization, this one called Natural Capitalism Solutions, will hold a teleconference, the purpose of which is to demonstrate “how utilities can benefit financially by shifting power generation from existing coal-burning plants to a combination of efficiency and renewable energy technologies.”
Let’s put this in context. Currently, coal-burning plants provide just over half of all the electricity generated in the nation. Coal is abundant and cheap. Wind and solar energy is neither. It is expensive by almost comparison and, worse, it is unreliable. Unlike the other energy sources, it provides few jobs.
Under the cold conditions of recent winter events, some wind turbines simply froze and ceased to function. In more temperate conditions, there is always the likelihood that the wind will not blow, thus necessitating the constant maintenance of back-up facilities that require coal or natural gas. This raises the obvious question, why bother with wind? Solar energy is subject to the same inconveniences if the sun is obscured by cloud cover and must constantly be monitored to remove dust on the panels that interferes with efficiency.
So-called renewable or clean energy currently represents about one percent of all the energy produced nationwide. If it weren’t for massive amounts of government cash and subsidies, there would be little or no renewable energy.
The U.S. is home to huge reserves of coal. It is often called the Saudi Arabia of coal. The same applies to oil. For all the talk of “energy independence”, the U.S. through its energy policies has been embarked since around the 1970s on something I call energy suicide.
If there is one thing the Greens truly hate it is the fuels we use to maintain our economy and our lifestyle. High on the list is coal, but it is essential to understand that the Greens are at war with oil and nuclear power as well. While fifty-five nuclear plants are being built worldwide, the U.S. lags behind the rest of the world thanks to the opposition of the Greens.
The purpose of cap-and-trade legislation, the next horror the Obama administration wants to foists on us, is to make the use of coal very expensive by claiming that it generates so much “greenhouse gas” that global warming is always just around the corner. This is no global warming and those greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, vital to all life on Earth as plant food. Nevertheless, reports are seeping out of the festering wound we call Congress that thirteen U.S. Senators are urging the Majority Leader and the authors of cap-and-trade “to specifically grant the EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired plants.”
Without legitimate scientific justification, EPA should not be able regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, but that is not likely to stop it from trying since real science or facts of any kind have rarely deterred its destructive agenda.
This is just another example of the Greens incessant and relentless attack on a major source of America’s vital source of life, its electrical power, and a major fuel source to generate it.
To return to the teleconference, those charged with the management of utilities would have to be mentally impaired or stupid beyond belief to give serious consideration to wind or solar power. It will be argued that those advocating this idiocy are naïve or just seeking energy alternatives for whatever noble notions they claim to have, but there is no such thing as “natural” capitalism. There is just capitalism and, the last time I checked, it operates on the basis of profit achieved in the most cost efficient and productive way to be competitive in the interest of its investors, its employees, and its consumers.
I think those in Congress and involved in the mind-boggling matrix of thousands of Green groups are engaged in doing as much harm as they can, as swiftly as they can, to the American economy and our future as a nation.
SOURCE
Australia: Police may lay charges over fatal results of rushed Greenie scheme
Peter "The Skull" Garrett should be in the dock too. He is the responsible Federal environment minister who seemed not to know his a*s from his elbow and basically seems to have supervised nothing in his portfolio
THE Federal Government's home insulation debacle took another twist yesterday with police confirming criminal charges could be laid over the three Queensland deaths. Detectives have been interviewing witnesses and gathering forensic evidence in all three cases, which occurred between October 2009 and February this year.
Workplace Health and Safety Queensland officers are continuing separate investigations. They were still interviewing people last week and moving towards a potential prosecution of individuals or companies. Individuals could face two years jail and a maximum $100,000 fine if found guilty of offences causing death.
The latest moves come as a NSW company ABC Insulation became the first installer to be penalised. It was hit with a $10,000 fine after a dodgy installation resulted in extensive fire damage to a western Sydney home. In Queensland, authorities said they were working quickly to complete reports into the fatalities. Police said they were investigating the deaths, but added it would be up to the coroner in each case to decide whether police explored criminal charges.
The directors behind two Queensland companies linked to fatalities were newcomers to insulation installation.
Matthew Fuller, 25, was electrocuted and his 18-year-old girlfriend, Monique Pridmore, received serious burns while installing foil insulation in a Meadowbrook home in Logan last October. He was working for QHI Installations, a company contracted by Brisbane-based Countrywide Insulation to do the work. Countrywide Insulation was founded by former bankrupt Jude Kirk, whose previous business interest was in telemarketing. A spokesman for Countrywide said it had not had any contact with authorities since an interview before Christmas. Countrywide reportedly secured 2000 insulation contracts before it was deregistered.
Also under investigation is the death of 22-year-old Mitchell Sweeney, who was electrocuted while working in the ceiling of a house at Millaa Millaa, southwest of Cairns, on February 4. He was employed by Gold Coast company Titan Insulations. Company records show Titan was co-owned by 26-year-old Nicholas Lindsay, a Building Services Authority-licensed builder, who established the company with Frederick Palomar in 2009. Titan was struck off the registered installers list before the program was scrapped, but Mr Lindsay is still able to operate as a builder.
Ben Aarons, the owner of the home where Mr Sweeney was killed, said he had not had any contact with authorities or Titan since the day of the accident. "I haven't heard a thing. They left a few rolls of insulation here but I don't think they'll be back to pick it up," he said last week. "The power was off for about 12 days. They got an electrician in to check everything about three weeks ago and it was given the all-clear. "But the Sweeney family lost a son so it's no big deal to go without power for a little while."
A third Queenslander killed was 16-year-old Rueben Barnes. Mr Barnes was killed on November 18 while installing insulation at Stanwell near Rockhampton. He was working for Arrow Property Maintenance, a company based in Rockhampton since 2006.
SOURCE
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PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS
After much reading in the relevant literature, the following conclusions seem warranted to me. You should find evidence for all of them appearing on this blog from time to time:
The Greenie message is entirely emotional and devoid of all logic. They say that polar ice will melt and cause a big sea-level rise. Yet 91% of the world's glacial ice is in Antarctica, where the average temperature is around minus 40 degrees Celsius. The melting point of ice is zero degrees. So for the ice to melt on any scale the Antarctic temperature would need to rise by around 40 degrees, which NOBODY is predicting. The median Greenie prediction is about 4 degrees. So where is the huge sea level rise going to come from? Mars? And the North polar area is mostly sea ice and melting sea ice does not raise the sea level at all. Yet Warmists constantly hail any sign of Arctic melting. That the melting of floating ice does not raise the water level is known as Archimedes' principle. Archimedes demonstrated it around 2,500 years ago. That Warmists have not yet caught up with that must be just about the most inspissated ignorance imaginable. The whole Warmist scare defies the most basic physics. Sadly, what the Vulgate says in John 1:5 is still only very partially true: "Lux in tenebris lucet". There is still much darkness in the minds of men.
The repeated refusal of Warmist "scientists" to make their raw data available to critics is such a breach of scientific protocol that it amounts to a confession in itself. Note, for instance Phil Jones' Feb 21, 2005 response to Warwick Hughes' request for his raw climate data: "We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?" Looking for things that might be wrong with a given conclusion is of course central to science. But Warmism cannot survive such scrutiny.
Most Greenie causes are at best distractions from real environmental concerns (such as land degradation) and are more motivated by a hatred of people than by any care for the environment
Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists
‘Global warming’ has become the grand political narrative of the age, replacing Marxism as a dominant force for controlling liberty and human choices. -- Prof. P. Stott
Comparing climate alarmist Hansen to Cassandra is WRONG. Cassandra's (Greek mythology) dire prophecies were never believed but were always right. Hansen's dire prophecies are usually believed but are always wrong (Prof. Laurence Gould, U of Hartford, CT)
The modern environmental movement arose out of the wreckage of the New Left. They call themselves Green because they're too yellow to admit they're really Reds. So Lenin's birthday was chosen to be the date of Earth Day. Even a moderate politician like Al Gore has been clear as to what is needed. In "Earth in the Balance", he wrote that saving the planet would require a "wrenching transformation of society".
For centuries there was a scientific consensus which said that fire was explained by the release of an invisible element called phlogiston. That theory is universally ridiculed today. Global warming is the new phlogiston. Though, now that we know how deliberate the hoax has been, it might be more accurate to call global warming the New Piltdown Man. The Piltdown hoax took 40 years to unwind. I wonder....
Bertrand Russell knew about consensus: "The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”
Motives: Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.
Policies: The only underlying theme that makes sense of all Greenie policies is hatred of people. Hatred of other people has been a Greenie theme from way back. In a report titled "The First Global Revolution" (1991, p. 104) published by the "Club of Rome", a Greenie panic outfit, we find the following statement: "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.... All these dangers are caused by human intervention... The real enemy, then, is humanity itself." See here for many more examples of prominent Greenies saying how much and how furiously they hate you.
The conventional wisdom of the day is often spectacularly wrong. The most popular and successful opera of all time is undoubtedly "Carmen" by Georges Bizet. Yet it was much criticized when first performed and the unfortunate Bizet died believing that it was a flop. Similarly, when the most iconic piece of 20th century music was first performed in 1913-- Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" -- half the audience walked out. Those of us who defy the conventional wisdom about climate are actually better off than that. Unlike Bizet and Stravinsky in 1913, we KNOW that we will eventually be vindicated -- because all that supports Warmism is a crumbling edifice of guesswork ("models").
"The desire to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it" -- H L Mencken
Al Gore won a political prize for an alleged work of science. That rather speaks for itself, doesn't it?
I am not a global warming skeptic nor am I a global warming denier. I am a global warming atheist. I don't believe one bit of it. That the earth's climate changes is undeniable. Only ignoramuses believe that climate stability is normal. But I see NO evidence to say that mankind has had anything to do with any of the changes observed -- and much evidence against that claim.
Seeing that we are all made of carbon, the time will come when people will look back on the carbon phobia of the early 21st century as too incredible to be believed
The intellectual Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) must have foreseen Global Warmism. He said: "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."
The Holy Grail for most scientists is not truth but research grants. And the global warming scare has produced a huge downpour of money for research. Any mystery why so many scientists claim some belief in global warming?
For many people, global warming seems to have taken the place of "The Jews" -- a convenient but false explanation for any disliked event. Prof. Brignell has some examples.
Global warming skeptics are real party-poopers. It's so wonderful to believe that you have a mission to save the world.
There is an "ascetic instinct" (or perhaps a "survivalist instinct") in many people that causes them to delight in going without material comforts. Monasteries and nunneries were once full of such people -- with the Byzantine stylites perhaps the most striking example. Many Greenies (other than Al Gore and his Hollywood pals) have that instinct too but in the absence of strong orthodox religious committments they have to convince themselves that the world NEEDS them to live in an ascetic way. So their personal emotional needs lead them to press on us all a delusional belief that the planet needs "saving".
The claim that oil is a fossil fuel is another great myth and folly of the age. They are now finding oil at around seven MILES beneath the sea bed -- which is incomparably further down than any known fossil. The abiotic oil theory is not as yet well enough developed to generate useful predictions but that is also true of fossil fuel theory
SOME MORE BRIEF OBSERVATIONS WORTH REMEMBERING:
"In science, refuting an accepted belief is celebrated as an advance in knowledge; in religion it is condemned as heresy". (Bob Parks, Physics, U of Maryland). No prizes for guessing how global warming skepticism is normally responded to.
"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." -- Thomas H. Huxley
Time was, people warning the world "Repent - the end is nigh!" were snickered at as fruitcakes. Now they own the media and run the schools.
"One of the sources of the Fascist movement is the desire to avoid a too-rational and too-comfortable world" -- George Orwell, 1943 in Can Socialists Be Happy?
Against the long history of huge temperature variation in the earth's climate (ice ages etc.), the .6 of one degree average rise reported by the U.N. "experts" for the entire 20th century (a rise so small that you would not be able to detect such a difference personally without instruments) shows, if anything, that the 20th century was a time of exceptional temperature stability.
Recent NASA figures tell us that there was NO warming trend in the USA during the 20th century. If global warming is occurring, how come it forgot the USA?
Warmists say that the revised NASA figures do not matter because they cover only the USA -- and the rest of the world is warming nicely. But it is not. There has NEVER been any evidence that the Southern hemisphere is warming. See here. So the warming pattern sure is looking moth-eaten.
There goes another beautiful theory about to be murdered by a brutal gang of facts. - Duc de La Rochefoucauld, French writer and moralist (1613-1680)
The latest scare is the possible effect of extra CO2 on the world’s oceans, because more CO2 lowers the pH of seawater. While it is claimed that this makes the water more acidic, this is misleading. Since seawater has a pH around 8.1, it will take an awful lot of CO2 it to even make the water neutral (pH=7), let alone acidic (pH less than 7).
In fact, ocean acidification is a scientific impossibility. Henry's Law mandates that warming oceans will outgas CO2 to the atmosphere (as the UN's own documents predict it will), making the oceans less acid. Also, more CO2 would increase calcification rates. No comprehensive, reliable measurement of worldwide oceanic acid/base balance has ever been carried out: therefore, there is no observational basis for the computer models' guess that acidification of 0.1 pH units has occurred in recent decades.
The chaos theory people have told us for years that the air movement from a single butterfly's wing in Brazil can cause an unforeseen change in our weather here. Now we are told that climate experts can "model" the input of zillions of such incalculable variables over periods of decades to accurately forecast global warming 50 years hence. Give us all a break!
If you doubt the arrogance [of the global warming crowd, you haven't seen that Newsweek cover story that declared the global warming debate over. Consider: If Newton's laws of motion could, after 200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation, be overthrown, it requires religious fervor to believe that global warming -- infinitely more untested, complex and speculative -- is a closed issue
A "geriatric" revolt: The scientists who reject Warmism tend to be OLD! Your present blogger is one of those. There are tremendous pressures to conformity in academe and the generally Leftist orientation of academe tends to pressure everyone within it to agree to ideas that suit the Left. And Warmism is certainly one of those ideas. So old guys are the only ones who can AFFORD to declare the Warmists to be unclothed. They either have their careers well-established (with tenure) or have reached financial independence (retirement) and so can afford to call it like they see it. In general, seniors in society today are not remotely as helpful to younger people as they once were. But their opposition to the Warmist hysteria will one day show that seniors are not completely irrelevant after all. Experience does count (we have seen many such hysterias in the past and we have a broader base of knowledge to call on) and our independence is certainly an enormous strength. Some of us are already dead. (Reid Bryson and John Daly are particularly mourned) and some of us are very senior indeed (e.g. Bill Gray and Vince Gray) but the revolt we have fostered is ever growing so we have not labored in vain.
Scientists have politics too -- sometimes extreme politics. Read this: "This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism... I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child." -- Albert Einstein
The "precautionary principle" is a favourite Greenie idea -- but isn't that what George Bush was doing when he invaded Iraq? Wasn't that a precaution against Saddam getting or having any WMDs? So Greenies all agree with the Iraq intervention? If not, why not?
A classic example of how the sensationalist media distort science to create climate panic is here.
There is a very readable summary of the "Hockey Stick" fraud here
The Lockwood & Froehlich paper was designed to rebut Durkin's "Great Global Warming Swindle" film. It is a rather confused paper -- acknowledging yet failing to account fully for the damping effect of the oceans, for instance -- but it is nonetheless valuable to climate atheists. The concession from a Greenie source that fluctuations in the output of the sun have driven climate change for all but the last 20 years (See the first sentence of the paper) really is invaluable. And the basic fact presented in the paper -- that solar output has in general been on the downturn in recent years -- is also amusing to see. Surely even a crazed Greenie mind must see that the sun's influence has not stopped and that reduced solar output will soon start COOLING the earth! Unprecedented July 2007 cold weather throughout the Southern hemisphere might even have been the first sign that the cooling is happening. And the fact that warming plateaued in 1998 is also a good sign that we are moving into a cooling phase. As is so often the case, the Greenies have got the danger exactly backwards. See my post of 7.14.07 and very detailed critiques here and here and here for more on the Lockwood paper and its weaknesses.
As the Greenies are now learning, even strong statistical correlations may disappear if a longer time series is used. A remarkable example from Sociology: "The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre’s yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at –0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper’s data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added." So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. In the Greenie case, the correlation between CO2 rise and global temperature rise stopped in 1998 -- but that could have been foreseen if measurements taken in the first half of the 20th century had been considered.
Relying on the popular wisdom can even hurt you personally: "The scientific consensus of a quarter-century ago turned into the arthritic nightmare of today."