   GREENIE WATCH -- MIRROR Warmist crooks above: Keith "One tree" Briffa; Michael "Bristlecone" Mann; James "data distorter" Hansen |
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".
The blogspot version of this blog is HERE. The Blogroll. My Home Page. Email John Ray here. Other mirror sites: Dissecting Leftism, Political Correctness Watch, Education Watch, Immigration Watch, Food & Health Skeptic, Gun Watch, Socialized Medicine, Eye on Britain, Recipes, Tongue Tied and Australian Politics. For a list of backups viewable in China, see here. (Click "Refresh" on your browser if background colour is missing) See here or here for the archives of this site
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20 November, 2009
Warmist secrecy cracked by hacker
Hadley CRU has apparently been hacked – hundreds of files released. The details on this are still sketchy, we’ll probably never know what went on. But it appears that Hadley Climate Research Unit has been hacked and many many files have been released by the hacker or person unknown. I’m currently traveling and writing this from an aiprort, but here is what I know so far:
An unknown person put postings on some climate skeptic websites that advertsied an FTP file on a Russian FTP server, here is the message that was placed on the Air Vent today: "We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents"
The file was large, about 61 megabytes, containing hundreds of files. It contained data, code, and emails from Phil Jones at CRU to and from many people. I’ve seen the file, it appears to be genuine and from CRU. Others who have seen it concur - it appears genuine. There are so many files it appears unlikely that it is a hoax. The effort would be too great.
More HERE
Galileo silenced again
The American Geophysical Union is sending science back four hundred years
By: Willie Soon and David R. Legates
Four centuries ago, “heretics” who disagreed with religious orthodoxy risked being burned at the stake. Many were the dissenting views that could send offenders to a fiery end. In 1633, the astronomer Galileo Galilei may have come within a singed whisker of the same fate, for insisting that the sun (and not the Earth) was at the center of the solar system. In the end, he agreed to recant his “heresy” (at least publicly) and submit to living under house arrest until the end of his days. Growing evidence ultimately proved Galileo was right, and the controversy dissipated. Theology gave way to nature in determining the truth about nature.
We wish that were the case today. Unfortunately, lessons learned 400 years ago have yet to be adopted where the Church of Anthro-Climatism is involved. Burning dissenters at the stake may no longer be an option – perhaps because it would send prodigious quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. However, many other ingenious punishments are often meted out, to ensure that dissent is kept within “acceptable” limits, or dissenters no longer dissent.
Just recently, as scientists who specialize in environmental science, climatology, and solar variability, we welcomed the acceptance of our scientific session, Diverse Views from Galileo’s Window: Researching Factors and Processes of Climate Change in the Age of Anthropogenic CO2. The session was to be hosted at the upcoming Fall 2009 Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco.
Our session was to focus on “knowledge that spans an extremely diverse range of expertise” and provides “an integrated assessment of the vast array of disciplines that affect and, in turn, are affected by the Earth’s climate.” Our ultimate goal was to stimulate discussion at this professional meeting, prior to the upcoming UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) fifth assessment report.
We developed this session to honor the great tradition of science and scientific inquiry, as exemplified by Galileo when, 400 years ago this year, he first pointed his telescope at the Earth’s moon and at the moons of Jupiter, analyzed his findings, and subsequently challenged the orthodoxy of a geocentric universe. Our proposed session was accepted by the AGU.
In response to its acceptance, we were joined by a highly distinguished group of scientists – including members of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, France and China, as well as recipients of the AGU’s own William Bowie, Charles Whitten and James MacElwane medals. Our participants faithfully submitted abstracts for the session.
But by late September, several puzzling events left us wondering whether the AGU truly serves science and environmental scientists – or simply reflects, protects and advances the political agendas of those who espouse belief in manmade CO2-induced catastrophic global warming.
On September 14, Dr. Nicola Scafetta of Duke University contacted us, to say the AGU had cancelled his previously-approved 12-paper session on Solar Variability and Its Effect on Climate Change, since it did not have enough papers. He asked if the papers from his session could be merged into our session; since they fit our theme well, we accepted his papers.
The merger was approved by the AGU Planning Committee. Thus our Galileo session now had grown to a total of 27 papers and was approved as a poster session at the Fall Meeting.
However, a few days later, after first approving our session and after we had assigned time slots for these new papers at AGU’s request, the Planning Committee revoked its approval and summarily dissolved our session. Now the committee claimed our session was “thematically divergent,” and divided the papers in our original session among six different sessions.
To cover its tracks, the committee created a new session called Diverse Views from Galileo’s Window: Solar Forcing of Climate Change with 15 papers – including the 12 from Dr. Scafetta’s original session that it had cancelled. That reduced the focus of this session to just solar forcing of climate, and eliminated discussions of the impact of anthropogenic CO2 that we had planned for our original session. The remaining papers from our cancelled session were moved to five other sessions, thereby undermining our original intent: comparing solar variability and manmade carbon dioxide as factors in planetary climate change.
In responding to us, the Planning Committee defended its actions by asserting: “none of [the papers in our session] have to do with the Galilean moons of Saturn [sic], which have to do with climate change or solar activity.” That claim reflects either a poor grasp of our purpose or a failure to read our proposal – and leads the question, Why wasn’t this issue raised when they originally decided to accept our session?
Our session proposal had clearly intended to honor Galileo’s observations of Jupiter’s (not Saturn’s) moons, which had led him to challenge the orthodoxy of the geocentric universe. We wanted to highlight how current research into the climatic effects of anthropogenic CO2 is challenging the supposed “scientific consensus” that humans are causing catastrophic climate change.
This arbitrary dissolution of our original session has serious implications for proper scientific enquiry. Our request that the session be reinstated has gone unheeded, despite the fact that the AGU has reinstated at least one cancelled session in the past. We have repeatedly been told that the decisions of the Planning Committee are final, though it has made clearly contradictory decisions regarding our session.
Reduced sunspot activity and solar energy output, stable or even cooling planetary temperatures, concerns over the high cost of proposed cap-and-trade legislation, political developments in Washington and Copenhagen, and other factors have caused more people to question manmade global warming disaster claims. This has led to consternation among scientists and organizations that have supported those claims.
However, as scientists, we are profoundly concerned by this behavior from a professional society that is supposed to serve science and its members. The AGU certainly had the right to reject our proposed session at the outset or before the solar variability session was merged with it. But given the topic of our session and the good faith approach we have taken in accepting papers from the cancelled solar variability session, it seems odd (at the very least) that our session was summarily dissolved, and that the AGU refuses to discuss the matter.
The AGU action is hardly reasonable. Indeed, it is counter-productive to the scientific method and to promoting open scientific discussions. It smacks of censorship. Something is rotten in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Scientific inquiry has once again been silenced … just as it was 400 years ago. The AGU should be ashamed. Its members should be outraged.
SOURCE
Reader’s Digest responds to boycott by skeptics
Removes its name as supporter of Copenhagen Climate Treaty
Reader's Digest has responded to a boycott initiated by www.NoCapAndTrade.com by having its name removed from a list of corporate supporters of the Copenhagen Climate Treaty.
Mr. William Adler, vice president of global communications at Reader's Digest, sent an email to the No Cap-and-Trade Coalition asking that Reader's Digest be removed from a list of 20 organizations that are being boycotted due to their support of the Copenhagen Treaty. Mr. Adler stated Reader's Digest had been incorrectly listed as a supporter of the Copenhagen Treaty at www.Hopenhagen.org. A review of the Web site confirmed that Reader's Digest's name had been removed as a "friend of Hopenhagen."
"Smart organizations like Reader's Digest are starting to realize that lending their brand to radical environmental movements is bad for business," said Jeff Davis, organizer of the No Cap-and-Trade Coalition. "We hope other organizations named in the boycott wake up and recognize this fact as well."
There are a total of 19 remaining organizations targeted by the boycott, including Google, Pepsi, Nike and BP America. The complete list of boycotted companies can be seen at www.NoCapAndTrade.com/boycott/.
SOURCE
Revealed: The design flaw in energy saving lightbulbs means they become dimmer over time
Energy-saving lightbulbs being used in millions of homes could lose up to 40 per cent of their brightness over the next few years, engineers warned yesterday. A design flaw in compact florescent bulbs mean they become dimmer as they age, a report by the Institution of Engineering and Technology said. Millions could need replacing long before their advertised lifespan of five or six years is reached.
The Government is phasing out traditional bulbs in order to meet Europe's climate change targets. Although other types of low energy bulb are available - including halogen and LED lights - most households are being encouraged to use compact fluorescent lamps. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs says CFLs use a fifth of the energy of traditional bulbs, saving a typical home at least £37 a year and cutting the UK's carbon dioxide emissions by five million tons.
However, independent retailers and critics say many of the low-energy alternatives are ugly, expensive and produce poor quality light. Doctors have warned that CFLs may cause rashes in light-sensitive patients.
A report in Engineering and Technology Magazine now warns that CFLs lose 'a significant amount of brightness' over time. Even a good quality bulb could lose 20 per cent of its light over its 8,000-hour lifespan - while cheaper bulbs could dim even more. The problem is made worse because some manufacturers exaggerate how much light comes from CLFs in the first place, the report says. 'Consumers could end up with a CFL nearing the end of its life that emits just 60 per cent as much light as a supposedly equivalent incandescent bulb,' the report says. That means a CFL that begins life as bright as a traditional 100watt bulb, could become as dim as a 60watt bulbs.
CFLs give off light when a current passes through a gas-filled tube. The gas glows with ultraviolet radiation which lights up a coating of white phosphor on the inside of the tube. Over time, this coating loses some of its ability to light up.
Other low-energy bulbs don't have the same problem. A halogen light - which uses 70 per cent of the energy of a conventional bulb - remains bright throughout its life. LED bulbs - which are beginning to appear in conventional bulb shapes and brightness - are also more reliable.
Editor in chief of Engineering and Technology Dickon Ross said most people were unaware that CFLs eventually lost their brightness. 'Our article goes someway to explaining consumers' dissatisfaction with CFLs and it's interesting that the major manufacturers have switched their focus to the development of LED lighting,' he said.
The Energy Saving Trust, which is funded by the Government, confirmed CFLs did lose brightness but claimed most people would not notice the difference. Trust-approved bulbs should never fall below 76 per cent of their initial brightness, it added.
SOURCE
NZ leader puts his faith in science, not politicians in Copenhagen
John Key is probably not going to Copenhagen or entertaining much hope that other world leaders who do so will come up with a deal on climate change. Not a big, binding and lasting deal. Not one that might be called historic or that locks the United States and China, the world's two biggest greenhouse gas emitters, to solid targets and action.
No, the Prime Minister of New Zealand is ''95 per cent'' sure he'll not be pressing the flesh in Denmark next month, and reckons he will not miss much, even though Greenpeace has offered to pay his fare. ''There is not going to be a deal,'' he told the Herald. ''What you will get out of it, is you'll get a high-level political statement and work program in 2010.''
Mr Key, who marked a year in power yesterday, is no denier or sceptic. He believes the world has a ''moral obligation'' to deal with climate change, and that consumers - more to the point, voters - broadly agree that action is necessary but ''you don't necessarily write a cheque to eastern European countries because they are polluting less''.
The central question is, what do you do? On a political level, Mr Key and his conservative National Party are in the process of a delicate flip. With support of the Maori Party he is rolling back the emissions trading scheme introduced by the previous Labour government. His scheme will be less ambitious and punitive - and is being attacked from within and without New Zealand. The farmers want it scrapped and accuse Mr Key of being ''obsessed'' by carbon emissions.
At stake is the country's reputation for being clean and green. The only time Mr Key loses his smile is when mention is made of a recent opinion piece in Britain's Guardian newspaper which claimed New Zealand had offered ''two fingers to the global community'' for allowing greenhouse gases to rise 22 per cent since signing the Kyoto treaty.
Mr Key calls the article ''bollocks'' and the writer, Fred Pearce, a green activist. The truth is, he says, the growth of emissions has been completely offset by planting 600,000 more trees. But the Prime Minister is acutely aware of the influence of consumers as regulators.
Australia's decision to exempt farmers from the ETS falls has, Mr Key concedes, ''put pressure on us''. Primary production accounts for about 48 per cent of the economy (against about 16 per cent in Australia) and half of all greenhouse emissions come from agriculture.
New Zealand's efforts are being made all the trickier due to two factors: the population is growing, from 3.2 million in 1990 to about 4.4 million now; and about 70 per cent of its energy already comes from renewable sources.
Mr Key is nonetheless optimistic solutions will be found that do not compromise living standards. The answers lie in science, he believes. ''All roads lead to technological solutions.''
SOURCE
A climate scare in Trafalgar Square
Ghost Forest, a new art installation, wants to frighten us into changing our greedy, planet-wrecking ways
A twenty-first century tribute to the Royal Family? A satirical swipe at the Labour government? A mistaken delivery address? At first, it’s difficult to know what to make of the large hunks of dead wood currently cutting a dash in London’s Trafalgar Square.
That is, until you read the info-boards positioned around the installation or encounter the press-released promotional material. At which point Ghost Forest’s meaning, or better still, its message, will become all too clear: all this modern stuff, this industrial development, has come at an environmental cost we’ve been able to ignore for too long. Why? Because it’s always been over there, in Africa, in South America. But not any more. In the form of huge tree stumps it’s been brought close, dumped in our figurative backyard. To quote its creator, the journalist-cum-artist Angela Palmer, it is an awareness-raising, visual expression of the ‘connection between deforestation and climate change’.
Featuring nine huge tree trunks (plus one injured one) which have been dragged across, and then ferried over from the Suhuma forest reserve in western Ghana, Ghost Forest is perhaps not the most appropriate name. With each trunk assigned its own slab on which to lie, a more accurate one would’ve been ‘The Tree Mortuary’. Which is certainly how it feels to walk around it. The trunks are arrayed like a body parts, their angry tangle of roots straining out like the veins and capillaries of gigantic limbs at one end, while at the other end there is just a clean, surgical, lumberjack’s cut. It’s as if you’re being encouraged to look at the results of planetary surgery, to survey the casualities of man’s open-heart conquest of nature. Palmer is clearly not insensible to the effect, judging by her anthropomorphic language. The roots are like ‘nerve-endings’, she says, the rainforests themselves, ‘the world’s “lungs”’.
This isn’t to say unsuspecting visitors were entirely clear as to what the stumps mean. Speaking on Monday, Palmer seemed unconcerned: ‘Many observers will see the stumps as beautiful sculptural objects; others will perhaps see the installation as a scene of devastation, others may see the tree stumps posited in the no-man’s land between the past and the future. For others the installation may represent an overt piece of political activism – a call to arms. I am equally comfortable with all responses.’ Beautiful sculptural objects? A no-man’s land between the past and the future? The most common response, from what I could see, was to stand next to the planet’s ripped-out lungs, and grin for the camera. After all, it’s not everyday some kindly artist leaves nine three-metre wide trunks around central London.
This surely missed Palmer’s point. Because whatever Palmer says, there was a point, a big, blunt change-your-ways point to Ghost Forest. Little wonder those reporting its opening on Monday were in no doubt as to what Ghost Forest was saying. In the words of Art Daily, ‘Ghost Forest’ is ‘a powerful visual statement about climate change’. ‘[A]s a microcosm of planetary overconsumption of expendable resources’, concluded the Londonist, ‘it’s a powerful statement’. Hence this Sunday it will leave London and head to Thorvaldsens Plads in Copenhagen to ‘raise awareness’ before the start of the UN climate change summit in December.
The reviewers had clearly read the promotional material. And this was the problem with Ghost Forest as art. In clued-up reports, in interviews on the Ghost Forest website, and on the 300-word-long, on-site info boards, the meaning of Ghost Forest was all too articulated. If the installation itself was ambiguous, a selection of barely worked-up Ghanaian tree stumps, its message was clear and overwrought. In fact the message could have done without its truncated embodiment in the wooden sculptures – the content here had no need of its form.
Overtly didactic art is nothing new, but what marks a project like the Ghost Forest out is the extent to which the hectoring content is liberated from the material in which it was to be represented. Little wonder that the UK foreign secretary’s special representative for climate change, John Ashworth, was able to praise it before it actually existed as an installation – after all it was the message, not its formal realisation, that was valuable. ‘We need to reach people in other ways as well’, he told Palmer. ‘Since the crisis we face is about who we are before it is about what we should do, the role of art will be critical. So I applaud what you are doing, and wish it success. You will in effect be confronting some of those who pass through Trafalgar Square with the consequence of their choices.’
Confront people with the consequence of their choices? This is art as behaviour-changing device. As Palmer explains on her website: ‘Its location in Trafalgar Square is key: it is one of the world’s most visited tourist sites and the epicentre of Western industrialisation over the past 200 years.’ In other words, for didactic purposes, plonking it in the centre of London allows it to tell as many people off as possible, from tourists to Christmas shoppers. It’s tricky to avoid The Message if you have to walk the long way round it.
Then there’s the element of juxtaposition, of bringing the distant near, of shoving the natural in the face of the social. In the midst of a developed society, ‘an epicentre of industrialisation’, the mortified tree stumps, symbols of the underside of industrial progress, exist to discomfit, to unsettle. They are signs that something is wrong. This is a gesture premised on the perceived complacency of the public, their selfish behaviour. And as if the distaste for the lives of modern citizens wasn’t writ large enough, Palmer is prepared to take her fetish for the primitive and animistic one step further: tomorrow, an Amazonian chief is going to bless the trees in a special ceremony.
Which does make you wonder. Perhaps Palmer is actually being subversive. After all, like Mark McGowan’s attempt to ‘raise awareness’ about water wastage by leaving the tap running in his London gallery, it took Palmer a large ship, and several tonnes of heavy haulage, to drag a symbol of excessive energy consumption to its current resting place. Add to that the power expended by the electricity generators to keep the lights blazing through the night, and Palmer’s carbon footprint must be at least the size of ten large Ghanaian trees. This must surely be one giant environmentalist wheeze, a satire of sanctimony, right?
Perhaps not: ‘The artist considered carefully the carbon footprint which would be incurred in the project’, the info-board tells us, ‘but felt its potential message to millions of people on the impacts of deforestation would outweigh the carbon “spend”. The carbon cost of “Ghost Forest” will be calculated and offset on a ClimateCare project which has introduced more energy efficient cooking stoves to Ghana, meaning fewer trees are needed to provide cooking fuel.’
This is straight-faced contemporary art all right. It is art for those who know the carbon price of everything and the value of nothing. And art without value is not really art at all.
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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19 November, 2009
Peer-reviewed academic journal article shows that climate models don't offer even remotely accurate predictions
Comments by By Lubos Motl:
In this dose of peer-reviewed skeptical literature about the climate, we look to the Hydrological Science Journal. D. Koutsoyiannis, A. Efstratiadis, N. Mamassis, and A. Christofides wrote a text: "On the credibility of climate predictions (PDF)".
They simply compared the local predictions for temperature and precipitation by many models with the real observations and found out that: "... The results show that models perform poorly, even at a climatic (30-year) scale. Thus local model projections cannot be credible, whereas a common argument that models can perform better at larger spatial scales is unsupported.
Gavin Schmidt decided to criticize paper: RealClimate.ORG
If he has an argument against the paper, I haven't found it. I agree with Schmidt's comment that it should have been expected that the models won't reproduce the local climate - even though our expectations could have very different reasons (my reason is that I simply know that the existing climate models don't properly deal with most of the essential climatological processes; I am not sure about Gavin's reasons).
But Koutsoyiannis et al. probably agree with it, too. (Confirmed by the lead author himself in the fast comments.) However, Koutsoyiannis et al. say not only that the local predictions of the models have been falsified: they also correctly say that the statement that the predictions would work at the longer distance scales is unsupported. And it is unsupported, indeed.
What does the word "climate" mean? It is the information about the behavior of the weather in a given region at time scales longer than 30 years or so. When we talk about the climate, we may be averaging over longer time scales but we are surely not averaging over the planet. Climate is always associated with a region: that's why we can distinguish tropical, dry, moderate, continental, and polar climates. ;-)
There is no "global climate". When people talk about "global climate change", it is the whole "climate change" that is supposed to be supplemented by the adjective "global": we are surely not talking about the changes of the "global climate" because the latter doesn't exist. Even Wikipedia controlled by William Connolley seems to agree with this proposition. It is strange that Gavin Schmidt seems to disagree.
So the short-term weather signals are averaged out but as Koutsoyiannis et al. show, it is still not enough to obtain an agreement between the models and the reality. The models clearly don't reproduce many changes well, especially not the changes driven by the long term persistence (or auto-correlation) of the time series. Note that the Hurst exponents determine the "color of the noise" and because these exponents generically exceed 0.5 in climatology, the long term persistence (the "inertia" of the climate) is very important.
Even if you don't understand these words about the Hurst exponents, you should understand that the predictions of the climate models for any particular region in the world will be essentially uncorrelated with reality because the reality is dominated by effects that are not properly simulated by the models. Because every single person lives in a particular region of the world and every region of the world is more or less incorrectly predicted by the models, I think it means that no rationally thinking person should pay serious attention to the predictions of these models.
And can the models become good at long distance scales again? Maybe. But it is extremely unlikely. If you think that they do become good at the global scale, you are believing in a very contrived, fine-tuned hypothesis: all the detailed (short-term, local) data that can be tested come out incorrectly but only when you care about one number - the global long-term temperature trend - all the errors must conspire and evaporate.
So the fashionable "climate change theory" is supposed to be an effective theory that only works at distance scales T and length scales L that are longer than certain bounds. If you want to believe that Gavin Schmidt is right, you must also believe that T must be between 30 years and 100 years and L must be greater than 6,000 km or so but shorter than 40,000 km. Why? Because the theory is falsified by the observations at shorter time and distance scales (the detailed local and/or meteorological data). But for the theory to be relevant for the Earth, the distance cutoff must be shorter than 40,000 km. And for the theory to be scary enough for a few future generations, the time cutoff must be shorter than 100 years. ;-)
When you average the known data over these very long scales, you are exactly at the moment when you lose all nontrivial climate information that could have been used to validate the model. It is exactly the moment when you are supposed to start to believe the models.
I find such a belief unjustifiable and crazy. If an effective field theory only works well enough at distances longer than a cutoff scale L, there is absolutely no a priori good reason why L should be between 6,000 kilometers and 40,000 kilometers! ;-) 1,000 km is already a very long distance not only for a particle physicist :-) but also for various local atmospheric variations to average out and for a useful approximate theory of the climate to start to be relevant. However, these theories seem to break down, even in their long-term predictions. When they break down at the distance scale of 1,000 km, is sounds extremely reasonable to me to assume that they probably break at the 6,000 km scale, too.
Similarly, if a theory highly incorrectly predicts the global climate trends for 10 or 20 years, which we already know to be the case from observations (even for the global mean temperature), it seems unreasonable to expect that the theory will be very accurate for 30-year, 50-year, or 100-year predictions.
Assuming otherwise is remotely analogous to the belief that Jesus Christ was the only person who could have walked on water. It may have been true that Jesus Christ was the only person for whom some unlikely cancellations of the gravitational force took place but it doesn't seem too likely to a scientifically trained ear. OK, Christian readers are supposed to hold their belief at this point but I just think that this particular belief is not natural from a scientific vantage point.
So I prefer the common sense approach of old-fashioned science: if all the detailed predictions of the existing models have been shown incorrect, it probably means that the models themselves are incorrect or at least substantially incomplete.
SOURCE (See the original for links)
Climate Theology: Gore's new book offers eco-salvation to his followers: 'I'm offering you the choice of life or death'
As the scientific basis for Warmism becomes vanishingly small, the religious nature of it comes to the fore
On a page by itself, we find this inside the front cover of Al Gore's latest climate fraud promotion book: "I'm offering you the choice of life or death. You can choose either blessings or curses." --Deuteronomy Chapter 30, Verse 19
Let's imagine that a Republican former vice president (say Dan Quayle or Dick Cheney) authored a similar book telling us that apocalypse was at hand unless we shoveled massive amounts of public money toward companies they've heavily invested in. Let's say the Republican-authored book also prominently featured the Bible verse above, suggesting that Quayle or Cheney was offering the reader the choice between life of death.
In the scenario above, would the mainstream media give Quayle or Cheney with the same respect and free book promotion airtime that Gore has received in recent weeks?
SOURCE
An attack on the poorest coming up? Developing nations outstrip rich on greenhouse gases
DEVELOPING countries now emit more greenhouse gas than rich countries, according to a study that will intensify demands for all countries to set targets for cutting emissions. Total emissions from burning fossil fuels in developing countries, including China, India and Brazil, have more than doubled since 1990 and are continuing to rise rapidly. By contrast total emissions from developed countries, such as the US, Japan and Britain have hardly changed over the same period. Last year developed countries were responsible for 46 per cent of global emissions, with developing countries responsible for 54 per cent.
The figures, published by an international team of scientists, will put pressure on developing countries to set stricter targets for slowing the increase in emissions. China and India are refusing to agree to any cap on their emissions and are instead offering vague targets for cutting emissions per unit of GDP. China overtook the US in 2006 as the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and has extended its lead each year since then.
The study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, compared the total emissions of 38 developed countries with those of all other countries. The study said that the increase in emissions from developing countries was in part due to their manufacture of goods for export to rich countries.
Professor Le Quere said that emissions per person remained much higher in rich countries, which supported only about a billion of the world's population of 6.7 billion. However, explosive growth in emissions in some countries, especially China, meant that the gap was slowly closing. China emitted 4.8 tonnes of CO2 per person in 2007, a rise of 138 per cent since 1991. India emitted 1.2 tonnes, up 79 per cent, and Brazil 2.1 tonnes, up 30 per cent.
The UK's emissions fell 12 per cent over the same period to 9.3 tonnes per person and US per capita emissions fell by 1 per cent to 19.9 tonnes.
Professor Le Quere said that the study did not take account of historic responsibility for greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. She said that developing countries were responsible for only 20 per cent of cumulative emissions since 1751. "Emissions in rich countries have only stabilised because they have reached a certain stage of development which other countries have yet to attain."
The study also found that the growth in global emissions from fossil fuels had accelerated from 1 per cent a year in the 1990s to an average annual rate of 3.4 per cent between 2000 and 2008. The growth continued last year during the global economic downturn, though at a reduced rate of 2 per cent.
Coal has overtaken oil as the biggest source of emissions, largely because many developing countries, including China, have vast domestic reserves of coal but have to import oil.
The study also suggested that the rise in CO2 emissions was outstripping the Earth's ability to soak up the carbon in forests and oceans. It said that the levels of global emissions that remained in the atmosphere had grown from 40 to 45 per cent over the past 50 years. This finding was disputed in a separate report, published last week, by another scientist who studied the same data. Both studies involved scientists from Bristol University's climate change research program.
Wolfgang Knorr, writing in Geophysical Research Letters, found no increase in the proportion of emitted carbon remaining in the atmosphere, suggesting that forests and oceans were more effective than previously thought at soaking up man-made emissions.
The dispute between climate scientists at the same university will be seized upon by climate change sceptics, who argue that the scientific evidence for man-made global warming remains uncertain and open to differing interpretations.
Meanwhile, President Obama tried to restore confidence in international negotiations on climate change by saying that he wanted the UN summit in Copenhagen next month to agree an "accord that covers all of the issues in the negotiations, and one that has immediate operational effect". He was speaking in Beijing two days after his officials had ruled out signing a legally binding treaty in Copenhagen (!)
SOURCE
Reducing Humans to Carbon Ash
The latest morally monstrous proposal out of the environmentalist cult comes from Lord Smith of Finsbury. He suggests that each British citizen be given a government “carbon allowance.” For any transaction that increases a person’s “carbon footprint” such as using gasoline or taking an airline flight, they would have to “spend” part of their allowance. Once their allowance reaches zero, they would have to pay out of pocket to purchase more credits, assuming that they are available. It is “cap and trade” for the individual.
Appallingly anti-human
The appallingly anti-human nature of this proposal is only surpassed by the appalling ignorance and intellectual laziness of a public that is not appalled by the fact that their politicians are literally leading them to suicide. An essential aspect of our lives as humans is to employ the materials in our environment for our survival and well-being: converting plants into food; trees into houses; oil into energy; metals into medical equipment, automobiles, and aircraft.
It is often too costly for us to employ carbon dioxide, one of the “outputs” of our act of living, efficiently for our use. We produce CO2 in some of our industrial activities and, indeed, every time we exhale. (As do all animals!) Plants, of course, breathe in our CO2.
The carbon allowance scheme dehumanizes us by teaching us to view ourselves merely as carbon output units, and the less output the better. The implication of this view is that every single human activity—indeed, the very act of living—a sinful indulgence, like some criminal urge for which we should be ashamed and which we should strive to suppress.
Child-haters
Just as our superstitious ancestors tortured themselves with guilt over taking joy in the things of this world, so those who accept the premises of the environmental cult do so today. The latest example is the rise of couples who refuse to have children because each new child is considered pollution on the Earth. Naturally, it is the choice of each individual whether or not to become a parent. But consider the complete depravity of what the environmental cultists peddle as morality.
There are men and women who long to have children; to cradle newborns in their arms; to hold their babies’ hands as they take their first steps; to watch them play with their friends and their toys; to teach them to say “mommy” and “daddy”; to teach them to read; to play with them in the park; to help them with their studies; to attend their graduations; and to see them become responsible adults and, perhaps, parents themselves.
Now consider those men and women who would give up the challenge and the joy of becoming a parent, who would damn themselves to emptier lives of “if only it could have been” because they ingest the poisonous notion that each new child must be thought of first as a carbon unit that poisons this planet.
This is no joke. For decades eco-radicals have advocated zero population growth with government action to bring about that result. Now they have the ultimate argument for selling suicide, that carbon is bad and that to live as a human is to produce carbon.
So we now find a recent Oregon State University study that argues that the carbon impact of having a child is 20 times greater than any other environmental choice, such as driving a car. Thus it’s not surprising when New York Times columnist Andy Revkin broaches the idea of giving carbon credits for those who have fewer kids.
Combine this notion with the British scheme and the clear implication is that the government will allow couples to have kids only if they can “pay” for the impact of those children out of their carbon allowance.
Totalitarians and tattoos
Like any government program, the carbon allowance idea would only grow. Its inexorable conclusion would be truly totalitarian. How would government control all human activities in the name of reducing human carbon output?
In Britain Lord Smith wants each individual assigned an identification number to keep track of their activities; how about tattooing it to our wrists? The system certainly would expand to track and thus to limit or proscribe more and more of our activities. The system likely would soon become a mechanism to meet the goal, voiced by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s environmental adviser Jonathon Porritt, of cutting the country’s population in half, by 30 million, in order to build a “sustainable” society.
To the extent that individuals accept the eco-cult’s view of humans and accept guilt for living, they will acquiesce as the new puritan politicians claim the right to control and destroy their lives through a new Inquisition.
Yes, the excuse for these sorts of measures is the need to stop climate change; the term “global warming” is falling out of favor since the globe has refused to warm up much over the past decade.
Climates have changed radically throughout Earth’s history before humans were around. Further, science today has not come anywhere close to establishing that the Earth’s climate is dangerously warming up; that humans producing CO2 are the principal cause; that the effects will be catastrophic to human life; that draconian restrictions on human activity can prevent such warming; and that the harm done by these restrictions will not be far worse than the warming.
Yet it’s not with reticence and reluctance but, rather, with recklessness and relish that eco-cultists push their Luddite proposals. In spite of occasional weak claims that such measures are meant to help future humans—those children we’re not supposed to have—the logic behind them implies that in the best of all possible worlds all humans would have their carbon “sequestered,” that is, would become ash in the ground.
Any given individual might back this ideology out of ignorance, ill-intent, or a combination of the two. But whatever the case, those who love their lives and who love the potential of every human being must continue to confront this anti-human ideology and those who promote it, to make clear the ideology’s implications, and to refuse to allow themselves to be destroyed.
SOURCE
Russia talks the talk
But won't need to walk the walk
Stockholm - Russia has decided to cut greenhouse-gas emissions to 20-25 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, diplomats at a summit with the European Union in Stockholm said Wednesday. Moscow's announcement of its goal should make it easier for the EU to demand emissions cuts from other key players, especially the United States and Canada, at United Nations talks on fighting global warming in Copenhagen and December, diplomats said.
The EU is keen to enlist Russian support ahead of the Copenhagen talks. The bloc's own target is to cut emissions to 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, and to deepen the cut to 30 per cent if other developed economies make similar pledges.
Russia's decision to cut emissions to 20-25 per cent below 1990 levels strengthens an earlier proposal to cut emissions by some 10-15 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. But it still means that Russia will be able to boost its emissions substantially over the next decade. This is because the country's Soviet industrial base collapsed in 1990 and has never been built back up to the same level.
Ahead of the summit, the host, Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and his guest, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, both stressed the two sides' commitment to a deal in Copenhagen. "Our countries are among the most advanced in terms of commitments (to address climate change) and the desire to move ahead" in Copenhagen, Medvedev said.
SOURCE
GREENIE ROUNDUP FROM AUSTRALIA
Three current articles below
The usual Greenie people-hatred
Birth control should be used to cut "greenhouse gas" emissions
INVESTING in birth control to reduce population growth could be more effective in cutting greenhouse gas emissions than building wind turbines or nuclear power stations, according to a United Nations report. Taking action to prevent one billion births by 2050 would save as much carbon dioxide as constructing two million giant wind turbines.
The UN Population Fund report predicted that the global population could reach 10.5 billion by 2050, up from 6.8 billion today, unless urgent action was taken to reduce fertility rates. It said that even its medium-growth forecast of 2.3 billion more people by 2050, which assumes a fall in average fertility from 2.56 to 2.02 children per woman, would make it much harder to achieve the cuts in carbon emissions needed to prevent catastrophic climate change.
The report said that reducing population growth would allow the 2050 target for global average emissions per person to be increased significantly above the 2 tonnes recommended by Lord Stern of Brentford, the author of an influential government report on global warming in 2006. Living standards would be higher because each person would be able to emit more CO2.
The report said: "No human is genuinely carbon neutral. Therefore, everyone is part of the problem, so everyone must be part of the solution in some way. Each birth results not only in the emissions attributable to that person in his or her lifetime, but also the emissions of all his or her descendents."
The report rejected the idea of Chinese-style laws to control population but said that a similar result could be achieved by promoting contraception and better education for women. It said that 215 million women, mainly in developing countries, wanted contraception but had no access to it. Funding from donor countries for the UN's birth control program has fallen from $723 million at its peak in 1995 to $338 million in 2007.
The report also said that the longer women remained in education, the fewer babies they had. Women who had never gone to school had an average of 4.5 children. Those who completed one or two years of university had 1.7. "Dollar for dollar, investments in voluntary family planning and girls' education would, in the long run, reduce greenhouse gas emissions at least as much as investments in nuclear or wind energy," the report said.
It revealed that, contrary to received wisdom, rates of unintended pregnancies were higher in rich countries than in poor ones. In Europe, the US, Australia, Canada, Japan and New Zealand, an average of 41 per cent of pregnancies were unintended, compared with 35 per cent in developing countries.
However, most of the projected increase in population would be in developing countries. The population of Africa was expected to double to two billion by 2050. The population of all developed countries was likely to rise only 3 per cent, though this masked big differences, with the US population expected to rise by a third to 400 million and Japan's expected to decline by a fifth to 100million.
The Population Fund acknowledged that reducing population growth in developing countries would have little immediate impact on emissions because their inhabitants have relatively small carbon footprints. But it said that the savings would increase as the economies of developing countries grew and levels of consumption - and, therefore, emissions - rose.
The report said that population growth was only beginning to be recognised as an important topic in international negotiations on climate change. It will not be discussed at next month's UN summit in Copenhagen. "Fear of appearing supportive of population control has, until recently, held back any mention of 'population' in the climate debate."
A spokeswoman for Cafod, the Catholic aid agency, said it did not support the promotion of birth control in poor countries, where the "underlying causes of large families ... are lack of education of women and unequal power relationships between men and women".
SOURCE
Up to 30 conservative parliamentarians may vote against Warmist laws
UP to 30 Liberal MPs and senators are set to defy their leader Malcolm Turnbull on emissions trading, one of the party's prominent climate change sceptics said. More than a third of the party would "probably cross" the floor of Parliament to vote against the scheme even if Labor agreed to Coalition amendments, backbencher Dennis Jensen said. "I don't want to name them but there are 30 MPs," he told AAP.
Coalition MPs and senators were expected to consider the outcome of negotiations presently underway with Labor when they meet in Canberra next Tuesday. A Senate vote was expected late next week and any changes the upper house makes to the legislation would need the support of the Lower House, where Labor has a majority. In the Senate, Labor needs the support of at least seven Liberals to win parliamentary approval for its scheme.
SOURCE
Enterprise is not the enemy
A conservative political advisor looks for a middle ground below
Georges Clemenceau, the French prime minister during World War I, said that war is too serious a matter to entrust to military men. In the same vein, the environment is too important to be left to the Greens. Bob Carr made the point recently that the Greens are not the environmental movement, they are a political party.
Environmental issues are mainstream and not a luxury. They go to the heart of how we sustain our growth and living standards in the face of rising population and resource depletion pressures. Environmental costs are not always incorporated in market prices but there is now ample evidence that market approaches, including appropriate property rights, have an important role to play in conservation regimes. They can reduce pollution at lesser costs than regulatory approaches, as the acid rain cap and trade system showed.
There is no incompatibility between private enterprise or capitalism and the environment. The success of capitalism in raising living standards has been used by some Greens to equate it with environmental degradation. The poor state of the environment in Eastern Europe when the Berlin Wall fell demonstrates that there is no corollary between social and economic systems and the condition of the environment.
The Greens have often used environmental issues to peddle an anti-capitalist and populist agenda, focusing on renewable energy sources as good, soft power while rejecting nuclear energy as hard power that is the dirty product of multinational corporations. These attitudes are not shared by many of those who vote Green.
In the previous federal election Labor made a good fist of owning the environment and climate change. In the public mind concern for the environment has come to be equated with action to address climate change. Kevin Rudd focused on the Coalition's failure to sign the Kyoto treaty as evidence of its lack of credentials on environment and climate. The issue was used to define John Howard as backward-looking and not interested in the future.
So Labor now has equity in the issue. Every day that the Coalition spends discussing, and dividing on, climate change is a day lost to other issues more to the Coalition's advantage. The party should neutralise these issues and move on or risk alienating a whole constituency of voters, not restricted to the young, who genuinely feel strongly about these matters but who do not wish to embrace Stone Age living standards.
So does that mean that climate change sceptics should just shut up? No, because scientific inquiry that improves our knowledge and uncovers errors must be encouraged. Scientists should have the moral courage to change their position as ugly facts slay beautiful theories. But as a layman, how do I know who is right in the climate change debate? Is it the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or the scientists who claim that the IPCC has been too timid in its projections of global warming? Is it celebrities jumping on the bandwagon or more isolated scientific voices such as that of Ian Plimer?
How is a politician to make a principled decision on such a weighty matter? The French mathematician and religious philosopher of the 17th century, Blaise Pascal, tackled a related issue. He formulated a wager to guide those wrestling with the concept of faith. Because faith was beyond reasoning he proposed that one should weigh the consequences of belief v unbelief. If you believe and hence lead a virtuous life on earth but there is no hereafter, what have you really lost (apart from a good time perhaps)? On the other hand, if you act as if there is no hereafter and God does exist, you have consigned yourself to purgatory and worse. The cost of unbelief is literally infinite compared with the cost of belief in these circumstances.
Applied to climate change, what are the costs of belief v unbelief? If you act and climate change turns out to be the new Y2K, it is true that resources will have been invested in the transition to a less carbon-intensive economy and there is the opportunity cost of locking up our remaining fossil fuel supply. But provided that there is genuine market in emissions trading the carbon price should crash and restore relativities with fossil fuels and other energy sources.
If climate change is genuine, urgent and otherwise irreversible, then early action pays off while late or no action results in mounting economic and social costs. The most rational strategy for a climate sceptic is to short the carbon market and wait for the big crash.
The recent Lowy poll picked up on a slide in the ranking of climate change as an issue of concern to Australians. Securing jobs was the No. 1 issue. This is the real challenge with polls and governing. People want climate change tackled but they want to do it without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Howard faced up to this dilemma in the 2004 election when he wrestled with what do about old-growth forests in Tasmania. On the eve of the election his advisers were urging him to tuck away a very substantial compensation package to pay for locking up significant forest reserves. The then-Labor leader Mark Latham had highlighted the issue during the year with a high profile visit to Tasmania and the recruitment of Peter Garrett to run in the seat of Kingsford Smith.
For the campaign, Latham put together a big forests package and according to Tim Gartrell, the then ALP national secretary, it polled well. Howard played cat and mouse with Latham during the campaign.
Early on in the campaign in the seat of Richmond on the NSW North Coast, Howard alluded to his dilemma. He was worried about sacrificing the jobs of timber workers in isolated communities with few alternative job prospects. He wanted a fair go for them and the environment. His chance came when Latham finally blinked and went down to Tasmania at the start of the last week of the campaign. The images of him being driven into an underground car park and virtually throwing his plan across the table in a "take it or leave it" attitude said it all.
Howard moved to finalise his policy in consultation with affected communities and in the middle of that week turned up at the Albert Hall in Launceston to announce it. He was rapturously received by the timber workers and their families; he had looked after them and had the courage to meet them and address their concerns. It sent a message to other affected communities on the mainland that Howard was about balancing jobs and conservation.
In a recent welcome development, Bob Brown, the leader of the Greens, and John Gay, the executive chairman of Gunns, have met to discuss the proposed paper mill that has caused no end of controversy in Tasmania. It is good that they are at least talking and perhaps will find a practical outcome to this long-running saga.
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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18 November, 2009
THE ARCTIC WAS WARMER IN THE RECENT PAST -- AND THE IPCC REPORT ACCEPTED THAT
An email from George Lloyd [galloyd@bigpond.net.au] below
Chapter 15 of the Working Group 2 report in the IPCC's 4th Assessment Report (AR4) deals with the Arctic and Antarctic polar regions. It draws heavily upon the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment Report (2005) (ACIA, 2005) and, indeed, praises ACIA, 2005 in the following words: "[ACIA, 2005]... has substantially improved the understanding of the impacts of climate change in the Arctic, is a benchmark for regional impact assessments, and may become the basis for a sustainable management plan for the Arctic."
Whist the document has clearly been around for some time I have seen very few references to it and, notwithstanding the clear bias of ACIA 2005 in favour of AGW, I believe your readers will find parts of it fascinating. In particular, chapter 2 "Arctic Climate: Past and Present" and, specifically, Section 2.7 "Arctic climate variability prior to 100 years BP" (pages 46 to 54) which documents the climate changes in the region from 2 million years ago up to the recent past.
The information on the Arctic climate during the Holocene (the past approx. 11,000 years to the present), some of which is summarised below, provides an interesting contrast with the alarmist views of today:
* climatic conditions were significantly warmer than today,
* marine mammals were present far north of their present day range,
* over most of Russia forests advanced to or near the Arctic coastline between 9 and 7 thousand years ago, and retreated to their present position by between 4 and 3 thousand years ago,
* during the period of maximum forest extension, the mean July temperature along the northern coastline of Russia may have been 2.5 to 7 deg C warmer than present,
* the period from 1550 to 1900 may have been the coldest period in the entire Holocene... The Little Ice Age (LIA), during which glaciers advanced on all continents, and
* Glaciers started to retreat around 1850 but between 1880 and 1890 there were glacier advances. In the early 20th century, glacier recession continued, with interruptions by some periods of advance. The most rapid glacial retreat took place between the 1920s and 1940s.
Those of your readers interested in exploring ACIA, 2005 in greater detail will find it HERE
In practice, wind power does NOT reduce carbon emissions
The introduction to a very long and thorough study below:
Integrating random, highly variable wind energy into an electricity system presents substantial problems that subvert wind technology’s ability to offset the use of fossil fuels–and avoid air emissions, including carbon dioxide (CO2). Measuring this accurately is important because many believe that wind projects significantly reduce such emissions.
This analysis finds that natural gas used as wind back-up in place of baseload or intermediate gas (in the absence of wind) results in approximately the same gas burn and an increase in related emissions, including CO2. Extrapolating from this example to the whole, the working hypothesis is that intermittent wind (and solar) are not effective CO2 mitigation strategies because of inefficiencies introduced by fast-ramping (inefficient) operation of gas turbines for firming otherwise intermittent and thus non-usable power.
Analysis
In the absence of extensive real-time load dispatch analyses at finely grained time intervals capable of accurately and sufficiently assessing all the variables affecting electricity system behavior as wind energy penetration increases, I propose a method – a calculator – that captures a wide range of considerations. I am unaware of any previous attempt that is as inclusive as what I present here and welcome reader comments for improvements on the present framework or alternative approaches.
This model, or calculator, provides a framework for the considerations involved and an interim assessment of their effects until sufficiently comprehensive studies can be performed in the areas indicated. It shows the impact on fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions compared to typical claims by wind proponents and other bodies, including some government policy makers. As it is parameter driven, the calculator allows examination of the sensitivity of these considerations. The result is that the typical claims are not supported, except by ignoring most of the following considerations:
* The amount of wind mirroring/shadowing backup required.
* Inefficient operation imposed on the mirroring/shadowing backup, in terms of both the fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions, treated separately.
* The need to make comparisons, with respect to gas plants, of:
o Case A – The more efficient Combined Cycle plants (CCGT) operating alone, in other words without the presence of wind, versus;
o Case B – The appropriate mix of gas plant type used to balance wind’s volatile output. This includes the need to introduce less efficient, but faster-reacting, Open Cycle Gas Turbine gas plants (OCGT) to mirror/shadow the wind production, especially as wind penetration increases.
* The effect of reduced wind capacity factor.
* The effect of wind output exceeding 1-2 percentage points of a total electricity system, on a country or regional basis.
The framework used is similar to that of Warren Katzenstein and Jay Apt (see citations below). It focuses on the wind/gas plant combination and has general applicability. Additional considerations involving wind’s impact on other electricity system elements particular to a specific jurisdiction, such as baseload capacity as analyzed by Campbell, will have to be assessed separately and could have implications that further offset wind’s claimed benefits.
Much more HERE
Greenie madness destroys California farms
For Fresno and California's entire Central Valley, it should be the best of times. With the dollar weak and the world hungry, the exceptionally fertile fields along the Golden State highway should be producing record yields of grains, fruits, vegetables and nuts. Instead framers are struggling to keep even a third of their potential acreage in use. Mile after mile of parched land greets the approach to the city of 500,000. And angry signs along the roadside condemn the federal government that has cut off the valley's water.
The delta smelt, a small fish that makes its home in the vast Sacramento Delta, has been declared endangered. Since late last year the water lifeline from the north to the south has been reduced to a trickle.
The pumps that power the water to the farms have been stilled for months at a time so as to avoid sucking in smelt. The smelt's numbers have been reduced by many causes, but the one the federal government has decided to target is the pumps.
When Washington, D.C., ordered the water shut off, jobs went down the drain. Tens of thousands of farm jobs have been lost, and unemployment in some farming towns has hit 40 percent.
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., posture about their concern (Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., can't even be bothered to meet with local officials), and the region's Democratic congressmen like Reps. Dennis Cardoza and Jim Costa pledge action, but the president, his senior officials and congressional allies have done nothing. A new, man-made dust bowl is taking shape, and the devastation is palpable.
Former Fresno Mayor Alan Autry was a guest on my broadcast from the city's downtown last week and told the audience about a food distribution day that drew 15,000 people. Pastor Jim Franklin of Cornerstone Church spoke about the growing desperation among many in his flock.
Third-generation farmers admitted on air that they couldn't imagine how they could hold on to their farms if the water wasn't turned back and with the assurance of stability so the annual cycle of preparation and planting that must begin now can proceed backed by financing that wouldn't be forthcoming unless the banks see the near certainty that the water will flow throughout 2010.
President Obama doesn't need a jobs summit or a second stimulus to create thousands of jobs overnight. All he has to do is order -- order -- his staff to insist that the Congress include relief in the appropriations bills headed his way.
Or President Obama could order -- order -- Secretary Salazar to conduct a rapid review by serious science of the deeply politicized findings that led to the water cutoff. There is much suspicion about the agency's deliberations here that a National Academy of Sciences review of the data has been promised by Salazar and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, but it will take months and months to complete. The president could demand his team work like their jobs were in as much jeopardy as those in the valley.
Alternatively, U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger could order that the restrictions on water delivery imposed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Dec. 15, 2008, be lifted until an environmental impact statement is prepared by the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Reclamation that wholly and fairly assesses the consequences of the service's job-destroying diktat. The judge ruled just last week that farmers and water agencies were entitled to summary judgment on their claim that the feds had acted contrary to the National Environmental Policy Act.
The court has scheduled a hearing on potential remedies for Nov. 24, two days before Thanksgiving. If he orders the suspension of the draconian "biological opinion" that imposed the water cutoff and mandated the drought, it will be a festive Thanksgiving in the valley.
Christmas will be brighter for tens of thousands of workers and farmers and their families who have seen their livelihoods imperiled by radical environmentalists and bogus "science." (Details on the hearing are available at pacificlegal.org.) But if the judge doesn't act and President Obama continues to give speeches and hold "summits" instead of ordering relief, a grim 2009 will turn into a catastrophic 2010.
SOURCE
It was the Sun wot done it. Or was it?
Interesting to see the following article in "The Times" of London
Like it or not, it will soon be time to start placing bets for a white Christmas. If most climatologists are to be believed you are almost certainly throwing your money away.
The onward march of global warming is consigning such traditional Christmas card scenes to history. No more deep and crisp and even winters for Britain, replaced instead by damp and slush and stormy.
But, if a small group of maverick scientists are right, the chances of Yuletide snow may rise dramatically over the coming decades.
The difference of opinion hinges on what role — if any — the Sun plays in climate change. The vast majority of climate scientists maintain that the solar influence is limited or even negligible, and it is the unsustainable growth of industrialised nations that is driving the climate into chaos. The mavericks contend that the Sun’s activity dwarfs the human contribution, and that there is nothing we can do except wait for the Sun to change.
The public seems to agree with the mavericks. In a recent poll for The Times, only 41 per cent of UK voters thought the case for man-made global warning had been proved. Now, by a quirk of nature, the Sun has presented us with a golden opportunity to resolve this debate once and for all.
Satellite measurements for the past 30 years show that the Sun’s energy output has remained remarkably constant. What is changing is the level of solar activity. Solar activity governs the appearance of sunspots — dark blemishes on the solar surface. Sunspots form where magnetism reaches out from the Sun into space. In times of high solar activity, sunspots pockmark the solar surface for years and the Sun’s magnetic field balloons outwards to shield the Earth from deep space particles called cosmic rays.
According to the mavericks, cosmic rays induce clouds to form when they strike our atmosphere and low-level clouds are thought to reflect sunlight, cooling the Earth. So, when solar activity is high, the Earth is protected from cosmic rays and fewer clouds are formed. Thus, more sunlight reaches Earth’s surface and the planet heats up.
But how to prove this? During the 20th century, solar activity rose steadily, as did the amount of industrial gases being pumped into the atmosphere. With both quantities rising, it has been impossible to distinguish between them. Now, that has all changed.
In the past 12 months solar activity has fallen to levels unseen since the 1920s. Sunspots have become rare sights and for three quarters of this year the Sun has been spot-free. According to one study if the trend continues at its current rate, the Sun will lose its ability to produce sunspots by 2015. That would take it back to its condition in the latter 17th century, when hardly any sunspots appeared for 70 years — and Northern Europe underwent the worst years of the so-called Little Ice Age.
Winter scenes from this period were romanticised by artists such as Brueghel painting frost fairs and hunting scenes. But was the 17th century sunspot crash responsible for the Little Ice Age or a coincidence? Could we now find ourselves plunged into a similar freeze if the sunspots do not return?
The answer to the latter is, presumably, yes if the Sun is solely responsible for climate change; no if the mainstream is correct and solar influence is negligible. With this in mind, tonight in Bruges, I am chairing a public debate for the sixth annual European Space Weather Week between world authorities on solar variability who represent all sides of this discussion and have differing opinions about the Sun’s influence on climate. Topping the agenda is the sunspot crash and the opportunity that it presents. The plunging solar activity level will effectively remove the solar influence on climate change. If we are vigilant and honest about any slowdown in warming, its amount will tell us exactly how much the Sun was contributing.
The smart money is on the level of solar contribution being somewhere between the two extremes. In other words, both solar activity and industrial gases play a role. There is credible scientific work that ascribes up to a third of current warming to solar influence. Studies show that the Earth’s temperature mirrored solar activity until the 1980s. Then the number of sunspots stabilised but the temperature continued to rise. In other words, something overtook the Sun as the primary driver of the Earth’s temperature. That is generally thought to be industrial gases.
Now the test can be made. It is time for all sides to put away the rivalry and begin to work together. Observations must be made, experiments performed and all data must be published, not cherry-picked. This golden opportunity to reach consensus must not be squandered.
Above all, we must not let any downturn in temperatures be used as an excuse by reluctant nations to wriggle out of pollution controls. Just as certainly as the solar activity has gone away, so it will return. If we have done nothing in the interim to curb man-made global warming, we will be in worse trouble than ever.
SOURCE
Elevating environmentalism over ‘less worthy’ lifestyles
The legal ruling that a belief in climate change is similar to a religious conviction seriously damages science, philosophy and democracy
Some scientists are bemused that a British judge has decided that a strong belief in alarmist climate-change scenarios ought to be awarded the status of religious faith. Following a judge’s decision at a UK employment tribunal that Tim Nicholson, a sustainability officer who was sacked from a property firm, was entitled to legal protection for his ‘philosophical belief’ in climate change, scientists have been expressing their shock. ‘As a scientist who works on climate change, I find it deeply alarming’, said Myles Allen, who heads the Climate Dynamics group at the University of Oxford (1).
Allen’s concerns are entirely understandable. Since the rise of the modern era, science has prided itself on its capacity to explain the world on the basis of experimentation, research and, above all, hard evidence. Science emerged, self-consciously, as an alternative to worldviews based on faith, moral conviction and other forms of a priori thought. So it is natural that a genuine scientist would feel insulted by the judge Sir Michael Burton’s ruling that Nicholson’s concern with climate change qualified as a ‘philosophical belief’ under the Religion and Belief Regulations 2003.
One reason why Allen and some of his colleagues are concerned about this decision is that it actually serves to undermine the pre-eminent authority of science today. In the twenty-first century, science has a near monopoly on authorising claims about virtually every aspect of human experience. We are far more interested in what ‘science says’ than in what ‘God says’. Consequently, even those who are sceptical about science and the scientific method will nevertheless mobilise these things to support their arguments. Not long ago, in the 1970s and 80s, leading environmentalists insisted that science was undemocratic, that it was responsible for many of the problems facing the planet. Now, in public at least, their hostility towards science has given way to their embrace and endorsement of science. The global warming lobby depends on the legitimation provided by scientific evidence and expertise.
However, if science is recast by a legal ruling as simply a moral or religious worldview, then its pre-eminent authority is likely to be compromised. What is to distinguish science from quacks with strongly held principles?
The erosion of the line between science and moralising has not simply been brought about by one eccentric judge. In recent times more than a few scientists have found it difficult to resist the temptation to cross the line into domain of public moralising. Take the case of Professor David Nutt, the expert recently sacked from the Home Office’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. As a scientist, he is entitled to point to evidence which unequivocally calls into question the government’s policy on drugs. But Nutt is not prepared to confine his role to that of a disinterested scientist; he also wants to be a moral crusader fighting against the scourge of alcohol.
‘I want parents to know alcohol will kill your kids, not ecstasy’, said Nutt last week, before insisting that the minimum drinking age should be increased to 21 (2). Nutt obviously has strong views on the subject of the minimum age of drinking, but these views are based on his personal moral attitude, not on science. The way in which Nutt can quite easily make a conceptual leap from scientific evidence to the domain of moral and political decision-making is symptomatic of a powerful trend today: the transformation of science into an ideology, if not a dogma.
Indeed, science often has the quality of a quasi-religious dogma these days, especially in the arena of climate-change alarmism. ‘The scientists have spoken’, says one British-based green campaign group, in an updated version of the religious phrase: ‘This is the Word of the Lord.’ ‘This is what the science says we must do’, many greens claim, before adding that the debate about global warming is ‘finished’.
As I have argued previously on spiked, campaigners against climate change frequently prefix the term science with the definite article, ‘the’. So Sir David Read, a former vice president of the prestigious scientific institution the Royal Society, stated: ‘The science very clearly points towards the need for us all – nations, businesses and individuals – to do as much as possible, as soon as possible, to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.’ (3) Unlike ‘science’, this new term – ‘The Science’ – is a deeply moralised and politicised category. Today, those who claim to wield the authority of The Science are really demanding unquestioning submission. The legal ruling that someone’s belief in the behaviour modification demanded by climate-change activists should have the status of a religious conviction shows how much The Science now influences Britain’s legal culture.
Although some scientists feel insulted that their views on climate change have been equated with a religion, there are many green activists who are more than happy to recruit the support of God to their cause. One blogger says ‘thinking about environmentalism as if it were a religion is an interesting way to go’. Why? Because religion ‘looks a lot more successful at achieving its aim worldwide than the environmental movement’ (4). Tim Nicholson wants to have both God and Science on his team. After the judgement he noted that ‘my moral and ethical values are similar to those promoted by many of the world’s religions’. However, he also added that ‘the difference is mine are not faith-based or spiritual, but grounded in overwhelming scientific evidence’.
Whether this ‘philosophy’ presents itself as science with a bit of religion, or as a religion based on science, appears to be a matter of personal opinion amongst campaigners, all of whom seem to believe that their cause is far too important for them to worry about opportunistic inconsistencies in argumentation.
Giving philosophy a bad name
When the law was changed to protect people from discrimination at work on the basis of their beliefs, many humanist and secular commentators believed this was a positive step forward. And some argued that philosophical beliefs ought to be accorded the same rights as religious beliefs. Unfortunately, what many supporters of the change in the law did not grasp was that if secular views were also transformed into ‘weighty and substantial’ beliefs, they would in effect become a form of pseudo-religion. This development is particularly striking in the way in which philosophy has been recast as religion-lite.
From the standpoint of Mr Justice Burton, adherence to climate-change theory is a philosophical belief because it is a view that is genuinely and deeply held. But where is the philosophy in all this? It is possible to argue that climate-change theory is inspired by a distinct epistemology and teleology and influenced by ethical and moral concerns. But in and of itself the belief in recycling and reducing consumption is not a philosophy.
Philosophy raises fundamental questions about the meaning of human existence. It engages with fundamental issues that underpin the sciences and public debate. Strictly speaking, the term ‘philosophical belief’ makes little sense, because philosophy is principally devoted to the task of asking questions and speculating about things, rather than providing answers. Philosophy is devoted to the quest for the truth in its quest for wisdom. It is not a secular form of religion. It does not rely on religious revelation for guidance, nor does it thrive when its search for answers is compromised by an adherence to a priori beliefs.
Such beliefs may arise out of a philosophical inquiry, but these beliefs do not constitute a philosophy as such. The term that Mr Justice Burton is really looking for to describe the beliefs and behaviour of climate-change crusaders is not philosophy or religion, but lifestyle.
The sacralisation of lifestyle
The decision to provide environmentalist arguments with the protection of the law, in a manner akin to that afforded to religion, demonstrates that the legal and political elites have lost their way. But it is important not to take too seriously the arguments used to support this decision. Strongly held moral views about the conduct of life have never been the essence of religions alone. In previous times, such sentiments informed political ideals and cultural movements. Today, the beliefs and practices advocated by Nicholson are part of his lifestyle. Yes, we take our lifestyles very seriously: what we eat, how we look or travel and whom we sleep with define many people’s identities. But in a world where there are a multitude of lifestyles, all of which have assumed great significance, it is not possible to treat them all as quasi-religions.
To qualify for protection under the Equality and Employment (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003, a philosophical belief must be ‘genuinely held’, be about a ‘weighty and substantial’ aspect of human experience, possess ‘seriousness, cohesion and importance’, and be ‘worthy of respect in a democratic society’. This last point is most significant. Who decides which strongly held view is ‘worthy of respect in a democratic society’? Certainly our legal and cultural elites have clear assumptions about which views are worthy of respect, and which are not. So last week we discovered that, under new proposals from the New Labour government, parents who are hostile to the provision of sex education in schools are not ‘worthy of respect’ despite the fact that their views are informed by genuine and deeply held convictions – their ability to withdraw their children from sex-education classes will be restricted.
Some forms of lifestyles are protected, or at least sacralised, by law, while others are stigmatised. So Christians who, in keeping with their beliefs, refuse to perform same-sex marriages are unlikely to gain legal protection, even though they express traditionally recognised religious convictions. However, those whose conscience does not allow them fly on Ryanair will now enjoy legal privileges and dispensation that are not accorded to their morally inferior colleagues. The sacralisation of elite-approved lifestyles creates a double standard that directly contradicts democratic norms.
Those who hold strongly held environmentalist views even have a semi-official mandate to break the law these days. Protesters against genetically modified (GM) food or nuclear power are often represented as idealist young people who are acting on ‘everyone’s behalf’. In truth, being part of the British political oligarchy, they have the kind of freedom to protest that is usually denied to ordinary mortals. That is why such protesters who break the law often face a sympathetic court hearing and win ‘not guilty’ verdicts (see State-sanctioned radicalism, by Brendan O’Neill).
So when Lord Melchett, the aristocratic former leader of Greenpeace, was arrested for criminal damage and theft after taking part in a protest against GM crops, he was genuinely shocked by his treatment. As far as he was concerned, his action was a ‘direct expression of “people’s power”’. Greenpeace, the self-appointed voice of the British people, described its action as an exercise in ‘active citizenship’ which ‘keeps democracy healthy and responsive’.
Melchett, like many other leading lobbyists, has an elitist notion of democracy, one driven by a conviction that, if they believe that something is wrong, then waiting for an unresponsive political system to do something about it is a luxury that society cannot afford. Professional environmental protesters assume that they have the moral authority to take matters into their own hands, since they are acting on behalf of The People. They believe that their unique philosophical insights entitle them to special dispensation. Now, Mr Justice Burton has effectively agreed with them, elevating environmentalism over other, inferior, less ‘worthy’ beliefs – and democracy is all the more impoverished for it.
SOURCE
The silly prophecies never stop coming
An absurd premise leads to an absurd conclusion again: Global warming threatens to rob Italy of durum wheat used to make pasta, says leaky Jonathan. They'd be better off importing cheaper Australian durum wheat anyway
Scientists will this week warn that Italy may be forced to import the basic ingredients for pasta, its national food, because climate change will make it impossible to grow durum wheat.
In a report to be released by the Met Office tomorrow, scientists predict that Italy’s durum yields will start to decline from 2020 and the crop will almost disappear from the country later this century.
The report will say: “Projected climate changes in this region, in particular rising temperature and decreasing rainfall, may seriously compromise wheat yields.”
The warning is the latest example of the impact climate change could have on lifestyles and diets across Europe. It has emerged from the five-year Ensembles project, an EU-sponsored study straddling 66 research centres in 20 countries across Europe.
The project has been led by the Met Office which will host a conference to unveil its findings this week.
The aim was to combine the power of various super-computers used to predict climate by different research groups across Europe. This would enable the researchers to generate climate projections for particular countries and regions.
One element involved predicting how rising temperatures and changing rainfall might affect food production. Italy was chosen as a case study because it is a leading food producer and its southerly position means it is especially vulnerable to temperature rises.
The same report will deliver similar warnings about potato and wheat growing in Poland, which supplies other parts of the European Union. The study contradicts earlier research which suggested rising levels of CO2 might boost crop yields.
Plants use CO2 as a raw material for building the proteins and carbohydrates needed to survive and grow. The Ensembles project found that this effect would be outweighed by the damaging impact of climate change.
Paul van der Linden, director of Ensembles, who is based at the Met Office, said: “We have looked at a small number of crops but many others could experience similar declines as Europe gets hotter and drier summers.”
It reinforces earlier research suggesting climate change may leave France unable to produce many of its leading wines, including champagne.
Similarly, Spain may also be unable to retain its position as a leading producer of fruit and vegetables because rising temperatures are predicted to turn much of the country into desert.
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 November, 2009
Al Gore, the scientist
Political scientist only, it would seem
Note Al Gore's recent rant about earth's core being several million degrees...SEVERAL MILLION DEGREES!?? See here where Al Gore tells O'Brien (at 40 seconds): "the earth's core is "several million degrees."
Not hardly, Al, you doofus. The core of the earth is "only" about 10,000 degrees F. (5700 K; 5400 C)
Besides, we've already been using geothermal energy for years in easily accessible places where it vents to the earth's surface; it's not new.
Regardless, Libs will forgive his pure ignorance because, after all, "he means well." Intelligent folks will further question his motivations (besides smarts) for pursuing CO2 so vigorously. (Income he gets from selling books, carbon credits and speeches on Catastrophic AGW, perhaps?)
Of course, we now we also understand his rants on supposed Manmade Global Warming/Climate Change; he really doesn't understand temperature differences.
Global warming traps icebreaker
It got stuck last year too -- in ice that was not supposed to be there
More than 100 penguin-loving tourists including dozens from Britain are trapped by ice off Antarctica aboard a Russian ice-breaker cruise ship, officials and the tour operator said on Monday. The Kapitan Khlebnikov is in a bay near Snow Hill island, located off the northeastern end of the Antarctic Peninsula, and cannot leave as the bay is sealed off with ice, the Russian transportation ministry said.
"The wind has currently slowed down in the area and the massing of the ice has ended. Everything is calm aboard the ice-breaker, nothing is threatening the passengers and crew," the ministry said in a statement. "When the wind changes to a favourable direction, the ice-breaker will head into clear water and on to the port of Ushuaia," at the extreme southern end of Argentina, the ministry predicted.
There were 105 passengers aboard the vessel and the total delay in the ship's scheduled trip could be around two days, it added. The ship has been at its current location for four days, German Kuzin, an official with the Far Eastern Shipping Company, the ship's owner, said in televised remarks. "There's nothing to worry about there," Kuzin said. "To put it plainly, the ship got stuck between an island and an ice massif."
Many of the passengers are Britons who paid more than STG10,000 ($A17,901.9) for a tour whose highlight was seeing emperor penguins on Snow Hill island, according to Exodus, a British tour operator. Around 50 mostly British passengers booked their tours through Exodus and have been well cared-for while the ship has been stuck, Rob Dixon, a spokesman for Exodus, told AFP by telephone from London. "There's a lot of entertainment on board," Dixon said. He said the weather was improving and predicted the ship would reach Ushaia by the end of this week, two or three days behind schedule. "They've certainly seen the penguins they came to see," Dixon added, noting that passengers had been able to leave the ship by helicopter.
Others aboard the ship included a three-person BBC television crew filming a documentary called The Frozen Planet, a spokeswoman for the British television network said in London. "Everyone's fit and well, there's no cause for concern, and they're filming today," she said, noting that they were filming emperor penguins for Frozen Planet, a BBC nature documentary series due to be aired in 2011.
Amenities aboard the Kapitan Khlebnikov include a swimming pool, a sauna and a bar operated by a professional bartender, according to the website of US-based tourism firm Quark Expeditions. The ship is "a polar-class icebreaker, combining power and technology with creature comforts", said Quark Expeditions, which leases the ship from Russia's Far Eastern Shipping Company.
SOURCE
Tipping points galore
Not again! Another 10-year climate 'tipping point' warning issued -- Despite fact that UN began 10-Year 'Climate Tipping Point' in 1989!
Once again, the world is being warned of a climate “tipping point.” The latest bout of stern warnings comes from the UK Met Office: 'World has only ten years to control global warming, warns Met Office - UK Telegraph – November 15, 2009
Excerpt: Pollution needs to be brought under control within ten years to stop runaway climate change, according to the latest Met Office predictions. [...] "To limit global mean temperature [increases] to below 2C, implied emissions of CO2 to the atmosphere at the end of the century fall close to zero in most cases."
Inconvenient History of Climate 'Tipping Point' Warnings:
As early as 1989, the UN was already trying to sell their “tipping point” rhetoric on the public. See: U.N. Warning of 10-Year 'Climate Tipping Point' Began in 1989 – Excerpt: According to July 5, 1989, article in the Miami Herald, the then-director of the New York office of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), Noel Brown, warned of a “10-year window of opportunity to solve” global warming. According to the 1989 article, “A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of 'eco-refugees,' threatening political chaos.” (LINK) & (LINK)
NASA scientist James Hansen has been warning of a “tipping point” for years now. See: Earth's Climate Approaches Dangerous Tipping Point – June 1, 2007 – Excerpt: A stern warning that global warming is nearing an irreversible tipping point was issued today” by James Hansen.
Former Vice President Al Gore invented his own “tipping point” clock a few years ago. Excerpt: Former Vice-President Al Gore came to Washington on July 17, 2008, to deliver yet another speech warning of the “climate crisis.” “The leading experts predict that we have less than 10 years to make dramatic changes in our global warming pollution lest we lose our ability to ever recover from this environmental crisis,” Gore stated.
Prince Charles claimed a 96-month tipping point in July 2009. Excerpt: The heir to the throne told an audience of industrialists and environmentalists at St James's Palace last night that he had calculated that we have just 96 months left to save the world. And in a searing indictment on capitalist society, Charles said we can no longer afford consumerism and that the "age of convenience" was over.
The UN chief Ban Ki-moon further shortened the "tipping point" in August 2009, when he warned of 'incalculable' suffering without climate deal in December 2009!
Newsweek magazine waded into the tipping point claims as well. Newsweek wrote: "The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality." But, Newsweek's "tipping point" quote appeared in a April 28, 1975 article about global cooling! Same rhetoric, different eco-scare.
UK Scientist Philip Stott ridiculed “tipping point” claims in 2007. Excerpt: In essence, the Earth has been given a 10-year survival warning regularly for the last fifty or so years. We have been serially doomed. [...] Our post-modern period of climate change angst can probably be traced back to the late-1960s, if not earlier. By 1973, and the 'global cooling' scare, it was in full swing, with predictions of the imminent collapse of the world within ten to twenty years, exacerbated by the impacts of a nuclear winter. Environmentalists were warning that, by the year 2000, the population of the US would have fallen to only 22 million [the 2007 population estimate is 302,824,000]. [...] In 1987, the scare abruptly changed to 'global warming', and the IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) was established (1988), issuing its first assessment report in 1990, which served as the basis of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC).
More HERE (See the original for links)
CERN looking at effect of cosmic rays on clouds and hence climate
While CERN's vast Large Hadron Collider accelerator gathers all the headlines - allowing humble hacks to become Hollywood blockbuster scriptwriters - an ancient piece of atom hardware is beginning experiments that may prove to be of significance.
CERN's much-anticipated CLOUD experiment has begun, the atom lab says. Using the 50-year-old Proton Synchrotron, the experiment simulates cosmic rays passing through the earth's atmosphere, and hopes to reveal the extent to which the constant background drizzle of charged particles plays a role in cloud formation. Earlier experiments have suggested that ionisation causes clouds to "seed" - and that ionisation is influenced by the type and quantity of cosmic rays that reach the earth.
Both the sun and the earth's magnetic fields act as umbrellas, protecting the surface from the high energy particles, although two particles still reach the surface per second. But small changes in the cosmic ray flux produce significant changes in cloud cover. When fewer cosmic rays reach earth, the planet's climate is warmer, when more reach earth, the climate cools.
"So marked is the response to relatively small variations in the total ionization, we suspect that a large fraction of Earth's clouds could be controlled by ionisation," noted Danish scientist Henrik Svesmark this summer. Svensmark has pioneered the research using smaller experiments, but has waited over a decade to see it tested on such a scale.
Much of the recent interest comes from climate watchers. Clouds are one of the biggest factors in determining global surface temperature, but the UN's IPCC admits the level of scientific understanding of them is poor.
The cosmic ray effect - a factor of the background CBR bombardment itself, and the relative strength of the earth and the Sun's magnetic shields - shows a strong correlation between temperature, CBR and is extraordinary. Here's the relationship over the short term - around 2,000 years.
And here's the correlation into deep time, with CO2 as a comparison.
In addition, "deep freezes" in the Earth's temperatures have coincided with short-lived but intense bursts of cosmic ray activity. Modulation is thought to reflect the Sun's passage through spiral arms of the Milky Way, and also the Sun's oscillation in relation to the plane of the galaxy. The Sun bobs up and down 2.7 times per orbit.
CERN became involved when a visiting lecture by former New Scientist editor Nigel Calder was attended by Jason Kirkby - CLOUD's project leader. It's taken 12 years to fire up the particles for this major test. CERN has an interview with Kirby here.
SOURCE
Does Britain's Green craziness ever stop?
Greenies used to LIKE trees once
Britain is set to plunder the lungs of the world to feed its growing hunger for wood to burn in power stations. A series of biomass-fired plants are being built in the UK that will trigger a 150 per cent surge in timber imports from 20 million tonnes today to 50 million tonnes by 2015, according to the Forestry Commission. British power plants are already shipping wood from Canada, Brazil, Scandinavia and South Korea.
Just one of the new biomass plants at Port Talbot, South Wales, will consume three million tonnes of wood per year — equivalent to 30 per cent of the UK’s domestic annual wood harvest of ten million tonnes. But the plant, which is due to open in 2012, will generate only 300 megawatt hours of electricity, or about 0.4 per cent of the UK's current power-generating capacity. At least four more 300-megawatt plants are planned, including three in Yorkshire that have been proposed by Drax, operator of Britain’s largest coal-fired power station. Another company, MGT, plans to build one on Teesside.
A spokesman for Prenergy, which is behind the Port Talbot plant, said 90 per cent of its wood supplies would be imported, although he insisted that all of it would be sourced from proven sustainable sources.
Nevertheless, environmental campaigners have raised concerns about the carbon emissions involved in shipping the wood such large distances, while to meet UK pest control laws the timber will need to be baked before it can be shipped to the UK.
Wood industry officials have warned that British families could face soaring prices for a range of wood-based products, including furniture, wood panels and even wallpaper because of its impact on low-grade timber and wood pulp prices. “It’s going to push timber prices through the roof,” said Gavin Adkins, chairman of the Wood Panel Industry Federation. He is concerned that large parts of the £1 billion industry that rely on wood as its main raw material will be forced offshore.
Although wood prices have moderated during the recession, rapid growth in demand had led to a 25 per cent rise since 2007, Mr Adkins said. “We operate in a low-margin industry and our ability to absorb such increases in raw material costs is limited. Inevitably these costs will have to be passed on to the consumer. Obviously, the timing could not be worse for the construction industry, which has been seriously hit in this recession.”
He said the number of jobs that may be lost was causing concerns for companies in the saw-milling, wood-panel and paper and pulp industries. The federation is lobbying for the biomass industry, which is supported by a government subsidy regime, to be given extra incentives to use waste wood instead of virgin timber for fuel. An estimated 4.5 million tonnes of waste wood are landfilled in the UK each year, according to government estimates.
A recent report from the Environment Agency stated that shipping timber from overseas could halve the potential carbon dioxide savings from biomass power.
SOURCE
Apocalypse Fatigue: Losing the Public on Climate Change
An amusing lament from Greenies Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger excerpted below. The one explanation for climate skepticism that they fail to consider is that the evidence for man-made global warming is just not there. A horse in blinkers would see more than they do
Last month, the Pew Research Center released its latest poll of public attitudes on global warming. On its face, the news was not good: Belief that global warming is occurring had declined from 71 percent in April of 2008 to 56 percent in October — an astonishing drop in just 18 months. The belief that global warming is human-caused declined from 47 percent to 36 percent.
While some pollsters questioned these numbers, the Pew statistics are consistent with the findings by Gallup in March that public concern about global warming had declined, that the number of Americans who believed that news about global warming was exaggerated had increased, and that the number of Americans who believed that the effects of global warming had already begun had declined.
The reasons offered for these declines are as varied as opinion about climate change itself. Skeptics say the gig is up: Americans have finally figured out that global warming is a hoax. Climate activists blame skeptics for sowing doubts about climate science. Pew’s Andrew Kohut, who conducted the survey, says it’s (mostly) the economy, stupid. And some folks have concluded that Americans, with our high levels of disbelief in evolution, are just too stupid or too anti-science to sort it all out.
The truth is both simpler and more complicated. It is simpler in the sense that most Americans just aren’t paying a whole lot of attention. Between being asked about things like whether they would provide CPR to save the life of a pet (most pet owners say yes) or whether they would allow their child to be given the swine flu vaccine (a third of parents say no), pollsters occasionally get around to asking Americans what they think about global warming. When they do, Americans find a variety of ways to tell us that they don’t think about it very much at all.
Three years after it seemed that “An Inconvenient Truth” had changed everything, it turns out that it didn’t. The current Pew survey is the latest in a series of studies suggesting that Al Gore probably had a good deal more effect upon elite opinion than public opinion.
Public opinion about global warming, it turns out, has been remarkably stable for the better part of two decades, despite the recent decline in expressed public confidence in climate science. Roughly two-thirds of Americans have consistently told pollsters that global warming is occurring. By about the same majority, most Americans agree that global warming is at least in part human-caused, with this majority roughly equally divided between those believing that warming is entirely caused by humans and those who believe it to be a combination of human and natural causes. And about the same two-thirds majority has consistently supported government action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions since 1989.
This would be good news for action to address climate change if most Americans felt very strongly about the subject. Unfortunately, they don’t. Looking back over 20 years, only about 35 to 40 percent of the U.S. public worry about global warming “a great deal,” and only about one-third consider it a “serious personal threat.” Moreover, when asked in open-ended formats to name the most serious problems facing the country, virtually no Americans volunteer global warming. Even other environmental problems, such as air and water pollution, are often rated higher priorities by U.S. voters than global warming, which is less visible and is experienced less personally than many other problems.
What is arguably most remarkable about U.S. public opinion on global warming has been both its stability and its inelasticity in response to new developments, greater scientific understanding of the problem, and greater attention from both the media and politicians. Public opinion about global warming has remained largely unchanged through periods of intensive media attention and periods of neglect, good economic times and bad, the relatively activist Clinton years and the skeptical Bush years. And majorities of Americans have, at least in principle, consistently supported government action to do something about global warming even if they were not entirely sold that the science was settled, suggesting that public understanding and acceptance of climate science may not be a precondition for supporting action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The more complicated questions have to do with why. Why have Americans been so consistently supportive of action to address climate change yet so weakly committed? Why has two decades of education and advocacy about climate change had so little discernible impact on public opinion? And why, at the height of media coverage and publicity about global warming in the years after the release of Gore’s movie, did confidence in climate science actually appear to decline?
Political psychology can help us answer these questions. First, climate change seems tailor-made to be a low priority for most people. The threat is distant in both time and space. It is difficult to visualize. And it is difficult to identify a clearly defined enemy. Coal executives may deny that global warming exists, but at the end of the day they’re just in it for a buck, not hiding in caves in Pakistan plotting new and exotic ways to kill us.
Second, the dominant climate change solutions run up against established ideologies and identities. Consider the psychological concept of “system justification.” System justification theory builds upon earlier work on ego justification and group justification to suggest that many people have a psychological need to maintain a positive view of the existing social order, whatever it may be. This need manifests itself, not surprisingly, in the strong tendency to perceive existing social relations as fair, legitimate, and desirable, even in contexts in which those relations substantively disadvantage the person involved.
Many observers have suggested that Gore’s leading role in the global warming debate has had much to do with the rising partisan polarization around the issue. And while this almost certainly has played a part, it is worth considering that there may be other significant psychological dynamics at play as well.
Dr. John Jost, a leading political psychologist at New York University, recently demonstrated that much of the partisan divide on global warming can be explained by system justification theory. Calls for economic sacrifice, major changes to our lifestyles, and the immorality of continuing “business as usual” — such as going on about the business of our daily lives in the face of looming ecological catastrophe — are almost tailor-made to trigger system justification among a substantial number of Americans.
Combine these two psychological phenomena — a low sense of imminent threat (what psychologists call low-threat salience) and system justification — and what you get is public opinion that is highly resistant to education or persuasion. Most Americans aren’t alarmed enough to pay much attention, and efforts to raise the volume simply trigger system-justifying responses. The lesson of recent years would appear to be that apocalyptic threats — when their impacts are relatively far off in the future, difficult to imagine or visualize, and emanate from everyday activities, not an external and hostile source — are not easily acknowledged and are unlikely to become priority concerns for most people. In fact, the louder and more alarmed climate advocates become in these efforts, the more they polarize the issue, driving away a conservative or moderate for every liberal they recruit to the cause.
These same efforts to increase salience through offering increasingly dire prognosis about the fate of the planet (and humanity) have also probably undermined public confidence in climate science. Rather than galvanizing public demand for difficult and far-reaching action, apocalyptic visions of global warming disaster have led many Americans to question the science. Having been told that climate science demands that we fundamentally change our way of life, many Americans have, not surprisingly, concluded that the problem is not with their lifestyles but with what they’ve been told about the science. And in this they are not entirely wrong, insofar as some prominent climate advocates, in their zeal to promote action, have made representations about the state of climate science that go well beyond any established scientific consensus on the subject, hyping the most dire scenarios and most extreme recent studies, which are often at odds with the consensus of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
These factors predate but appear to have been exacerbated by recession. Pew’s pollster Kohut points to evidence indicating that the recession has led many Americans to prioritize economic over environmental concerns...
Perhaps we should give the American public a little more credit. They may not know climate science very well, but they are not going to be muscled into accepting apocalyptic visions about our planetary future — or embracing calls to radically transform “our way of life” — just because environmentalists or climate scientists tell them they must. They typically give less credit to expert opinion than do educated elites, and those of us who tend to pay more attention to these questions would do well to remember that expert opinion and indeed, expert consensus, has tended to have a less sterling track record than most of us might like to admit....
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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16 November, 2009
Another Warmist assumption shattered
None of their models predict this sort of thing. They predict gradual warming. BUT: "Ice Age 'took six months to freeze Europe'
It took just six months for a warm and sunny Europe to be engulfed in ice, according to new research. Previous studies have suggested the arrival of the last Ice Age nearly 13,000 years ago took about a decade - but now scientists believe the process was up to 20 times as fast.
Geological sciences professor William Patterson, who led the research, said: 'It would have been very sudden for those alive at the time. It would be the equivalent of taking Britain and moving it to the Arctic over the space of a few months.'
Professor Patterson's findings emerged from one of the most painstaking studies of climate changes ever attempted and reinforce the theory that the earth's climate is unstable and can switch between warm and cold incredibly quickly. [Which makes ALL prophecies based on current knowledge useless]
His conclusions, published in New Scientist, are based on a study of mud deposits extracted from a lake in Western Ireland, Lough Monreagh - a region he describes as having the 'best mud in the world in scientific terms'. Professor Patterson used a precision robotic scalpel to scrape off layers of mud just 0.5mm thick. Each layer represented three months of sediment deposition, so variations between them could be used to measure changes in temperature over very short periods. He found that temperatures had plummeted, with the lake's plants and animals rapidly dying over just a few months. ... The subsequent mini Ice Age lasted for 1300 years....
More HERE (I have not reproduced the speculation added on to the above factual report -- JR)
World Leaders Agree to Delay Global Warming Deal
I mentioned this yesterday but it is such good news for the planet that it desrves a re-run. Prosperity is very good for the environment and Warmist laws would be a frontal attack on prosperity
World leaders meeting in Singapore have decided to punt on reaching any firm agreement at next month's global warming conference in Copenhagen.
The decision represents a huge setback to the Obama administration's goal of passing a cap and trade bill this year, which conversely is great news for virtually every company in America that has been worried about the higher cost of doing business that would come from the enactment of such legislation.
As the New York Times reported:
"President Obama and other world leaders have decided to put off the difficult task of reaching a climate change agreement at a global climate conference scheduled for next month, agreeing instead to make it the mission of the Copenhagen conference to reach a less specific "politically binding" agreement that would punt the most difficult issues into the future. [...]All together now -- aaaawwwww!
"There was an assessment by the leaders that it is unrealistic to expect a full internationally, legally binding agreement could be negotiated between now and Copenhagen, which starts in 22 days," said Michael Froman, the deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs. "I don't think the negotiations have proceeded in such a way that any of the leaders thought it was likely that we were going to achieve a final agreement in Copenhagen, and yet thought that it was important that Copenhagen be an important step forward, including with operational impact." [...]
The agreement on Sunday codifies what negotiators had already accepted as all but inevitable: that representatives of the 192 nations in the talks would not resolve the outstanding issues in time. The gulf between rich and poor countries, and even among the wealthiest nations, was just too wide.
Among the chief barriers to a comprehensive deal in Copenhagen was Congress's inability to enact climate and energy legislation that sets binding targets on greenhouse gases in the United States. Without such a commitment, other nations are loath to make their own pledges.
Administration officials and Congressional leaders have said that final legislative action on a climate bill would not occur before the first half of next year".
SOURCE
COP15 and the Shameless Manipulation of Children
The United Nations Climate Summit in Copenhagen is fast approaching, and with cap and trade legislation languishing in Congress, developing nations averse to binding regulations, and the public preoccupied with a faltering economy, hopes by climate treaty advocates that a climate agreement will be reached this December are diminishing. Nevertheless, advocates for a sovereignty-usurping, economically-devastating, wealth-redistributing and environmentally-fraudulent treaty are tirelessly churning out materials meant to sway the public and assert pressure on leaders to reach an enforceable agreement.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) provides an example. Agitating for a "green industrial revolution," the WWF is a vociferous advocate for global warming legislation and environmental activism - regardless of the practical consequences. Last month, for example, the outfit came out with the breathless pronouncement that the world has less than five years to drastically cut carbon emissions or, it claims, climate catastrophe will be inevitable. (To be fair, this was less absurd than British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's October 19 prediction that the global community had only 50 days to avert disaster.)
Several days ago the WWF crossed a line, releasing a propagandistic video of children of WWF staffers parroting the illogical doomsday scenarios the group works to propagate. The WWF explained the video's objective:
"To urge the President to lead us in Copenhagen and outline what we'd like to see in the agreement, we invited children of WWF staffers to tape a personal message to the President asking for his support... We hope you'll be inspired to send an email or write a letter to the White House that tells President Obama that you want him to go to Copenhagen to protect our planet."
Child welfare officials have investigated the now infamous parents of "Balloon Boy" for allegedly coaching him to lie in a publicity scheme. These WWF parents coerced their children for political influence, and, should their efforts succeed, a thoroughly destructive climate treaty.
Which is worse?
SOURCE (See the original for video)
An Alarmist Modeler’s History of Climate Change
Behind the persistent global warming scare is the hypothesis and assertion that increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are causing Earth to warm dangerously. The thesis is espoused most prominently by Al Gore, James Hansen, modelers and other alarmists. It is the fundamental assumption behind the computer models that consistently conjure up headline-grabbing climate change disaster scenarios.
A basic principle of geology and other sciences is that the same natural processes we observe today – erosion, plant growth, species adaptation and so on – occurred in a similar manner throughout Earth’s history. Therefore, if carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are causing global warming today, they must have done so in the past, and certainly in the recent historic past.
The challenge, then, is to discover the sources of those climate villains throughout history. This brief summary of key events is intended to aid in that quest, and explain how the Gore-Hansen thesis worked through the ages.
Sea levels have risen 400 feet since the last Ice Age ended, melting mile-thick Pleistocene glaciers, drowning land bridges and creating new coral reefs. The repeated glacial and interglacial epochs were caused by rising and falling levels of mammoth flatulence and emissions from cave man fires, the only sources of substantial greenhouse gases (GHG) at the time.
In northern Africa, green river valleys were once home to contented hippopotami and happy human villagers. Then, 4,000 years ago, the region metamorphosed into the Sahara Desert, as Egyptian slaves cooked over open fires and breathed heavily, while building pyramids for pharaohs.
Earth warmed further during the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods, as fires from constant warfare and sacked cities dramatically increased GHG. The burning of English and Irish villages by Viking raiders raised global temperatures even further, enabling Eric the Red to colonize Greenland. As the Vikings swapped raiding for farming, however, atmospheric CO2 levels declined, and the Little Ice Age set in.
For centuries, peaceable Anasazi Indians built cliff dwellings and farmed the land in Arizona and New Mexico. But then other tribes began setting forest fires to create farmland, and lightning started prairie fires. GHG levels rose, causing a prolonged drought that finally made life unbearable for the Anasazi, who abandoned their magnificent stone villages on the Colorado Plateau.
In more recent times, American families tamed and farmed the Great Plains. But then the automobile, airplane and World War I drove CO2 and GHG previously unheard of levels. The resultant Dust Bowl devastated the region, forcing millions to leave their homesteads.
Fortunately, World War II intervened, and even higher concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, dust, and particulates from burning oil and cities ended the warming and droughts, and ushered in a new era of global cooling. It was marked by snows and freezing cold at Stalingrad and the Battle of the Bulge, and later by the “new Little Ice Age” scare headlined by Newsweek in 1975.
As GHG levels continued to “soar,” all the way from 0.0280% of Earth’s atmosphere to 0.0350% (250-350 ppm), global cooling gave way to a new bout with global warming. Finally, as CO2 and GHG climbed even higher (all the way to 0.0380% of the atmosphere, equivalent to 38 cents out of $1000), planetary temperatures mysteriously stabilized around 1998 and then began to decline slightly. The world entered the age of “climate change,” or more accurately “manmade catastrophic climate change,” in which every weather anomaly is blamed on emissions from human use of hydrocarbons.
This brief recounting of human history is admittedly incomplete, and fails to address events in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. However, historians can certainly fill in those gaps.
Alternatively, scientists, journalists, academics, modelers and politicians could begin to examine the climate change issue from a more scientific, less ideological perspective. They could worry less about perpetuating or expanding the one-track $89-billion (1989-2009) gravy train of federal government grants for breathless studies of how “manmade climate change” causes frightening increases in everything from house cats and hurricanes to malaria, rainfall, droughts and suicides. (An online search under “everything is caused by global warming,” will locate a complete list.)
Gore, Hansen, Stephen Schneider, and Senators Boxer and Kerry could actually engage in a few debates about global warming/catastrophic climate change science and economics.
They might be surprised to learn that climate change has actually brought benefits to mankind and planet Earth, including a greening of the Sahara Desert over the last twenty years, due to increased rainfall and CO2 levels. Even trees and animals are coming back to a region once devastated by Egyptian slaves.
They might be stunned to find that ice core and other data demonstrate that temperatures warmed first during past climate changes, and then atmospheric CO2 levels increased, as warming ocean waters released some of the carbon dioxide that they sequestered during colder periods.
They might be amazed to discover that our ancestors, who were even more dependent on agriculture than we are – and even less technologically advanced – somehow managed to cope with climate change. They adapted! As James Burke, Brian Fagan and other historians have noted, they responded to the Little Ice Age by modifying their houses, heating systems, clothing and farming practices. (Optimists might suppose that our far more advanced technologies will make us even better able to adapt to whatever climate changes nature, or man, might visit upon us in the future.)
Alarmists might be shocked to think the causes of past climate changes were the same natural forces and influences that drive changes in Earth’s complex, chaotic, unpredictable weather and climate today: continental movements and volcanoes, and periodic shifts in water vapor and cloud cover, evaporation and precipitation, ocean currents and jet streams, planetary alignments and the shape of the Earth’s orbit, the tilt and wobble of Earth’s axis, solar energy output, and cosmic rays hitting the planet.
Meanwhile, hard-pressed consumers and taxpayers might finally figure out that the fear-mongering over global warming has little to do with scientific “evidence” to back up the speculation, assumptions and assertions that mankind faces a climate cataclysm. (Models are not evidence.) It has everything to do with money, prestige, careers, power and control over energy use and economic opportunity – and an abiding distaste for hydrocarbons, personal freedom, modern living standards, and real environmental justice.
But don’t hold your breath for a debate. Climate alarmists are scared to death to debate. They prefer to dismiss and intimidate climate realists, assert “consensus,” and assiduously ignore both Earth’s history of natural climate change and the 31,000 “Oregon Petition” natural scientists who vigorously contest their claims of manmade Climate Armageddon.
SOURCE
Al Gore Heckled During Global Warming Speech In Boca Raton
Nobel Laureate Al Gore was heckled during a global warming speech he gave Saturday in Boca Raton, Florida. Addressing a crowd of a thousand people at the Mizner Park Amphitheater, Gore was repeatedly booed by about 200 protesters stationed outside the open-air facility. As reported by the Sun Sentinel Saturday:
"Stationed outside the Mizner Park Amphitheater, the protesters jeered at Gore as he took the podium and at those walking into the open-air venue to listen to the speech.SOURCE
"This is the most dangerous crisis we've ever faced," Gore said of climate change. He spoke over a chorus of boos from protesters, who were monitored by at least a dozen uniformed city police officers.
Many of the protesters were with the groups Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow and South Florida Tea Party, the latter of which feels that Gore's views will eventually lead to increased taxes and flawed business legislation. The protesters carried drums, bullhorns and posters. One read "Practice what you preach," accusing Gore of not living a green lifestyle. Another poster read "The masses follow the asses," depicting the protesters' opinion that Gore's message is not backed by scientific evidence.
Bacteria turn carbon dixoide into fuel
US researchers have genetically modified bacteria to eat carbon dioxide and produce isobutyraldehyde - a precursor to several useful chemicals, including isobutanol, which has great potential as a fuel alternative to petrol. The modified bacteria are highly efficient and powered by sunlight, so a future goal is to set up colonies near to industrial plants. This would allow greenhouse gases to be recycled into useful chemical feedstock - supplying several hydrocarbons that are typically obtained from petroleum.
Liao and his team used genetically modified cyanobacteria to produce isobutyraldehyde from carbon dioxide. Cyanobacteria and microalgae that consume CO2 have been identified for a long time, but none produce any liquid molecules that can easily be used as fuel. In the past, attempts have been made to engineer these organisms to produce hydrogen or ethanol, but making the process efficient is a challenge.
'Here, we were successful in engineering CO2-eating bacteria to produce isobutyraldehyde very efficiently,' says James Liao, who led the work at the University of California, Los Angeles, US. 'Our process is around 10 times faster than hydrogen production and about 100 times faster than genetically engineered ethanol production.'
Liao's team modified the genome of the cyanobacteria Synechococcus elongatus by incorporating four genes from other bacteria into the structure. These genes, which come from L. lactis, B. subtilis and E. coli, produce enzymes that hijack the metabolism of the microbes - turning them into miniature reaction vessels.
The synthetic pathway begins with the photosynthetic conversion of CO2 to pyruvic acid by the bacteria. Next, the reaction continues in the bacteria as the added genes trigger three further steps to make isobutyraldehyde.
Importantly, extracting the final product from the mix is a simple process. 'The fuel vaporises to the gas phase easily, making separation extremely simple. Afterwards, we can liquefy it again by simple condensation,' Liao told Chemistry World. This process helps keep the bacteria alive longer, as they are not exposed to large amounts of chemicals. 'The bacteria are very stable, and in our flasks without much environmental control, the bacteria continued to produce for about 10 days,' Liao says.
But there are still much work to be done before the process can be commercialised, Liao notes, particular with scaling up the process.
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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15 November, 2009
More about ‘Scientific Consensus’
By S. Fred Singer
According to the UK Met Office, the core climate science from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was written by 152 scientists from more than 30 countries and contributed to and/or reviewed by some 600 experts. Not mentioned, however, is the fact that many of the reviewers disagreed with the IPCC conclusion that most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is “very likely” (>90% sure) due to the observed increase in man-made greenhouse gas concentrations.
Also unmentioned is the fact that most of the science of the IPCC report is not controversial. The only crucial chapter is Chapter 9 (on “Attribution”), in which the IPCC attempts to show that 20th century warming was anthropogenic. It was written by only 9 scientists and is dominated by a tightly controlled clique whose members referee each others' papers and consider ‘attribution studies’ as their private fiefdom.
The NIPCC was set up to break down this monopoly. The NIPCC Summary (2008) and full report (2009) demonstrate that there is no real evidence backing the IPCC conclusion www.NIPCCreport.org.
The following letter, signed by senior physicists, was sent to all 100 U.S. senators on October 29, 2009:
A GAGGLE IS NOT A CONSENSUSSEPP Science Editorial #36-2009 (11/14/09)
You have recently received a letter from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), purporting to convey a “consensus” of the scientific community that immediate and drastic action is needed to avert a climatic catastrophe.
We do not seek to make the scientific arguments here (we did that in an earlier letter, sent a couple of months ago), but simply note that the claim of consensus is fake, designed to stampede you into actions that will cripple our economy, and which you will regret for many years. There is no consensus, and even if there were, consensus is not the test of scientific validity. Theories that disagree with the facts are wrong, consensus or no.
We know of no evidence that any of the “leaders” of the scientific community who signed the [AAAS] letter to you ever asked their memberships for their opinions, before claiming to represent them on this important matter.
We also note that the American Physical Society (APS, and we are physicists) did not sign the letter, though the scientific issues at stake are fundamentally matters of applied physics. You can do physics without climatology, but you can't do climatology without physics.
The APS is at this moment reviewing its stance on so-called global warming, having received a petition from its membership to do so. That petition was signed by 160 [by now well over 200] distinguished members and fellows of the Society, including one Nobelist and 12 members of the National Academies. Indeed a score of the signers are Members and Fellows of the AAAS, none of whom were consulted before the AAAS letter to you.
NOTE: Fred Singer is headed for Europe at the moment -- for lectures/briefs/debates. He invites you to come by if you are close. Get detailed schedule and contacts from Ken@Haapala.com but here is the outline: Brussels (EU Parliament) Nov 18-19. London (IEA) Nov 20-24. Zurich Nov 25. Stuttgart (DLR) Nov 26. Heidelberg, Mainz Nov 27-28. Brussels Nov 30-Dec 2. Berlin Dec 4. CPH Dec 6 –11.
"No fixed target" for emissions say Asian leaders
ASIA-Pacific leaders will drop a fixed target for halving greenhouse gas emissions in a final summit statement, a Chinese official said, ahead of a breakfast meeting on climate issues organised by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. "On the 50 per cent reduction target (from 1990 levels) by 2050, yes, it did appear in the draft," said Yi Xianliang, a Chinese foreign ministry official who is part of the country's negotiating team at world climate talks. "However, it is a very controversial issue in the world community... if we put it in this (final) statement, I think it would disrupt the negotiation process," he told reporters on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.
Leaders from 21 APEC members including US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao are in Singapore for an annual summit ending today. The meeting is one of the last international gatherings ahead of world climate change talks opening in Copenhagen on December 7.
Chinese officials said Mr Hu would attend a breakfast meeting called by Mr Rudd dedicated to the climate change issue, and would give a speech outlining steps China has taken to battle global warming. Mr Obama is also expected to attend Mr Rudd's climate breakfast, other officials said.
A rift has widened between rich nations such as the United States and developing ones like China over who should bear the most responsibility for reducing the emissions blamed for global warming. The United States wants China to commit to aggressive steps to curb its rapidly rising emissions. China, however, says the West bears historical responsibility for the build-up of carbon levels in the atmosphere and must shoulder most of the burden for cutting emissions. The United States and China are the two largest sources of such emissions.
Mr Yi declined to comment on which nations pushed for the removal of the emission cut target from the draft APEC statement, which was obtained by AFP last week. "We believe that global emissions will need to peak over the next few years, and be reduced to 50 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050, recognising that the time frame for peaking will be longer in developing countries," it had said.
The Chinese official said the excision of the 50 per cent target was a "collective decision" by the APEC members. Mr Yi added that rich nations were increasingly showing a tendency to back away from tough action on climate change. "It is fair to say that the biggest obstacle to climate change negotiations is the bloc of developed nations," he said.
SOURCE
Propaganda failure: Global warming is not our fault, say most British voters
Less than half the population believes that human activity is to blame for global warming, according to an exclusive poll for The Times.
The revelation that ministers have failed in their campaign to persuade the public that the greenhouse effect is a serious threat requiring urgent action will make uncomfortable reading for the Government as it prepares for next month’s climate change summit in Copenhagen.
Only 41 per cent accept as an established scientific fact that global warming is taking place and is largely man-made. Almost a third (32 per cent) believe that the link is not yet proved; 8 per cent say that it is environmentalist propaganda to blame man and 15 per cent say that the world is not warming.
Tory voters are more likely to doubt the scientific evidence that man is to blame. Only 38 per cent accept it, compared with 45 per cent of Labour supporters and 47 per cent of Liberal Democrat voters.
The high level of scepticism underlines the difficulty the Government will have in persuading the public to accept higher green taxes to help to meet Britain’s legally binding targets to cut carbon emissions by 34 per cent by 2020 and 80 per cent by 2050.
The recession appears to have made tackling climate change less of a priority for many people. Only just over a quarter (28 per cent) think that it is happening and is “far and away the most serious problem we face as a country and internationally”, while just over half (51 per cent) think it is “a serious problem, but other problems are more serious”.
Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office, said that growing awareness of the scale of the problem appeared to be resulting in people taking refuge in denial. “Being confronted with the possibility of higher energy bills, wind farms down the road and new nuclear power stations encourages people to question everything about climate change,” she said. “There is a resistance to change and some people see the problem being used as an excuse to charge them more taxes.”
Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, said: “The overwhelming body of scientific information is stacked up against the deniers and shows us that climate change is man-made and is happening now. We know that we still have a way to go in informing people about climate change and that is why we make no apologies about pushing forward with our new Act on CO2 campaign.”
SOURCE
Beach alarmism comes unglued
Hawaii's famed white sandy beaches are shrinking so the "global warming" shriek arose -- but some pesky Prof. stymied that by pointing out that sea levels have been rising for over a century. It's not a recent rise, as the Warmists would have you believe. And there are still untold miles of beautiful deserted sandy beaches in Northern Australia so the sea level has got a ways to go yet. If you get on a flight to Cairns International airport in Australia, you will have ready access to beaches that you can only dream of in Hawaii
Jenn Boneza remembers when the white sandy beach near the boat ramp in her hometown was wide enough for people to build sand castles. "It really used to be a beautiful beach," said the 35-year-old mother of two. "And now when you look at it, it's gone."
What's happening to portions of the beach in Kailua — a sunny coastal suburb of Honolulu where President Barack Obama spent his last two family vacations in the islands — is being repeated around the Hawaiian Islands. Geologists say more than 70 percent of Kauai's beaches are eroding while Oahu has lost a quarter of its sandy shoreline. They warn the problem is only likely to get significantly worse in coming decades as global warming causes sea levels to rise more rapidly. "It will probably have occurred to a scale that we will have only been able to save a few places and maintain beaches, and the rest are kind of a write-off," said Dolan Eversole, a coastal geologist with the University of Hawaii's Sea Grant program.
The loss of so many beaches is an alarming prospect for Hawaii on many levels. Many tourists come to Hawaii precisely because they want to lounge on and walk along its soft sandy shoreline. These visitors spend some $11.4 billion each year, making tourism the state's largest employer.
Disappearing sands would also wreak havoc on the environment as many animals and plants would lose important habitats. The Hawaiian monk seal, an endangered species, gives birth and nurses pups on beaches. The green sea turtle, a threatened species, lays eggs in the sand.
Chip Fletcher, a University of Hawaii geology professor, says scientists in Hawaii haven't yet observed an accelerated rate of sea level rise due to global warming. Instead, the erosion the islands are experiencing now is caused by several factors including a steady historical climb in sea levels that likely dates back to the 19th century. Other causes include storms and human actions like the construction of seawalls, jetties, and the dredging of stream mouths. Each of these human actions disrupts the natural flow of sand.
But a more rapid rise in sea levels, caused by global warming, is expected to contribute to erosion in Hawaii within decades. In 100 years, sea levels are likely to be at least 1 meter, or 3.3 feet, higher than they are now, pushing the ocean inland along coastal areas. Fletcher says between 60 to 80 percent of the nation's shoreline is chronically eroding. But the problem is felt particularly acutely in Hawaii because the economy and lifestyle are so dependent on healthy beaches.
The state is doing everything it can to keep the sand in Waikiki, for example, joining with hotels in the state's tourist hub on a plan to spend between $2 million and $3 million pumping in sand from offshore.
Sam Lemmo, administrator of the state's Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands, says the state would need a variety of adaptation strategies for different beaches. It would likely have to abandon hope for beaches in posh Lanikai and suburban Ewa Beach on Oahu because they're already lined with seawalls and are badly eroded. The same probably goes for shoreline next to highways or other critical public infrastructure, where seawalls already exist or may have to be built. Seawalls protect individual properties from encroaching waters but they exacerbate erosion nearby by preventing waves from reaching the sand needed to replenish the beach.
For undeveloped shoreline, the state wants to make sure these areas stay pristine. This happened recently when a Florida-based developer announced plans to build luxury homes on sand dunes in Kahuku on Oahu's North Shore. "We just kind of went nuts, pulled out all the guns on that one, basically got them to back off," Lemmo said. "We're working pretty hard to keep any new development away from these areas."
SOURCE
Corn Ethanol: A "Slow-Motion Train Wreck"
On Monday, Pavel Molchanov, a Houston-based analyst with Raymond James & Associates issued a report that should be required reading for every member of Congress. The first few lines of Molchanov’s report, “Corn Ethanol’s Slow-Motion Train Wreck: What Will Follow In Its Wake?” are classic examples of both sharp thinking and razor-sharp writing: “Finito. Kaputt. Sayonara. However you say it, we think there is no denying the fact that America’s corn ethanol industry is finished… the industry is finished in the sense of no longer being seen as a ‘game-changing,’ long-term solution to the structural imbalance between oil supply and demand.”
Molchanov goes on, saying that as other alternative fuels, like compressed natural gas get more political support, “it is likely that corn ethanol will be increasingly relegated to the big grain elevator in the sky.”
This kind of plain talking from a Wall Street analyst like Molchanov about the corn ethanol scam is long overdue. The ongoing robbery of US taxpayers via the corn ethanol mandates has achieved the one thing that the ethanol boosters promised. Specifically, it has not resulted in a reduction in US oil imports. For more on that, read Robert Rapier’s killer analysis which we published last month. Or, also see my piece, published in Slate, in November 2008 on the same subject.
Despite the facts about the corn ethanol, Congress continues to give political cover to the corn ethanol scammers, a point that Molchanov makes very clearly:
Notwithstanding all the controversies surrounding ethanol in recent years – its impact on global food prices, to name just one – Washington continues to provide Midwestern farmers (many of whom live, amazingly enough, in electoral swing states) with lots of goodies. The three big ones are the blenders’ tax credit, the ethanol import tariff (helping keep out Brazilian sugar ethanol), and most importantly, a guaranteed floor for demand via the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). Originally enacted in 2005, the RFA was upsized in the December 2007 energy bill by a Democratic Congress and a Republican president – showing that if there is one thing the parties can agree on, it’s pandering to farmers.Ah yes, pandering to farmers – one of the oldest of the Washington professions. For a classic example of that pandering, recall that the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill which passed the House in June included a provision – which was reportedly inserted at the behest of Minnesota Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson -- that exempts the corn ethanol scam from any oversight by the EPA on its total greenhouse gas emissions. That’s important because a number of studies have shown that when compared with conventional gasoline, corn ethanol is actually worse in terms of greenhouse gases. In 2008, a study led by Princeton academic Tim Searchinger found that corn ethanol nearly doubles greenhouse gases over a 30-year time period. Another study by Searchinger, published last month in Science, also underscored the need for more rigorous accounting when it comes to biofuels and their total greenhouse gas emissions. (See here for an interview I did with Searchinger in March 2008.)
The US now has 202 ethanol distilleries with a total nameplate capacity of 13.1 billion gallons per year (about 850,000 barrels per day). But according to Ethanol Producer magazine, 23 of those distilleries – with a total capacity of 1.27 billion gallons of alcohol – are now sitting idle. In other words, nearly 10% of total US corn ethanol production capacity is now sitting idle because the economics of the business are lousy. The investors who rushed to build new production capacity back in 2007 now are wondering what to do with their expensive machinery. Of course, the industry has rebounded somewhat in recent months. Back in February, about 16% of total US ethanol production capacity was idle.
But looking forward, Molchanov doesn’t see much relief for the corn ethanol scam. He points out that investment capital is scarce and that the industry may not have enough capacity by 2015 to meet the Congressional mandates, which require US motor fuel suppliers to be blending at least 15 billion gallons of ethanol into gasoline supplies by 2015. “Even if the EPA allows ethanol blending at 12% or 15% rather than 10% – as the industry is aggressively lobbying for – the industry’s poor economics,” will still hamper any new investment in additional distilleries.
And what about cellulosic ethanol, that wonder fuel that everyone talks about but no one ever sees? Here’s Molchanov’s take: As the pitfalls of corn ethanol have become increasingly apparent, cellulosic ethanol developers will have an opportunity to provide a better alternative, but it’s still years away from commerciality, with significant financing and execution risks in the meantime.” Now there’s an understatement. Despite decades of hype from various media darlings including Amory Lovins, cellulosic ethanol still has not achieved anything close to commercial levels of production. And it’s doubtful that it will achieve commerciality at any time over the next few decades.
What does that mean? Well, it means that Congress is going to have to rethink the rules that it laid out in the 2007 energy bill which require fuel suppliers to be blending 21 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol into the US fuel supply by 2022.
Molchanov’s look the ethanol train wreck is a welcome bit of truth amid an energy debate that is increasingly detached from any semblance of reality.
SOURCE
Australia: Prime Minister Rudd buys off the farmers. He wants a climate deal at any price
Agriculture now to be exempt from Warmist laws but that blows a huge hole in any effect the laws might have. Rudd is showing his Chinese influences: He is now just trying to save face. He cares about global warming about as much as I do
In a shock move, the Federal Government has decided to exempt all agriculture from its proposed emissions trading scheme, turning up the heat on Malcolm Turnbull's Opposition leadership. The Coalition has been calling for the exemption – and the Government's surprise move dramatically raises the stakes for Mr Turnbull to close a deal with Climate Change Minister Penny Wong to pass the ETS in the next two weeks of Parliament.
Yet sections of the Opposition Leader's Liberal Party and the Nationals are likely to remain opposed to any such deal regardless, leaving Mr Turnbull's authority in shreds.
The surprise concession by the Government will be announced by Senator Wong today ahead of the resumption of Parliament this week. The initiative will also isolate the Nationals, who have been using the inclusion of agriculture in the proposed scheme by 2015 to spearhead its opposition to the package.
Senator Wong's announcement is likely to get backing for the scheme from key Nationals constituencies such as the National Farmers Federation, which has been lobbying heavily for such a decision. In another concession, Senator Wong will also announce the Government will develop plans to give farmers carbon credits for any efforts to capture and store carbon as part of their farm practices.
Opposition climate change spokesman Ian Macfarlane has been locked in talks with Senator Wong trying to negotiate a deal to get the scheme through the Senate. By announcing the exemption of agriculture, the Government will be able to say it has made major concessions and Mr Turnbull should now secure the backing of his party room to pass the scheme.
But Mr Turnbull is still likely to face a revolt. A number of Liberals, including Senate Leader Nick Minchin and senators Cory Bernardi and Julian McGauran, along with WA backbenchers Dennis Jensen and Wilson Tuckey, remain sceptical of the idea of man-made global warming and the Nationals are continuing to oppose the ETS outright. A refusal by the joint party room to back a compromise that includes the exemption of agriculture could make Mr Turnbull's leadership untenable. He has previously said he does not want to lead a party that does not embrace the idea of climate change.
The exclusion of agriculture had been presented by Mr Macfarlane as a "deal-breaker" in the ongoing talks. The move by the Government means farmers now will not have to buy permits for their carbon emissions, substantially reducing farm costs.
The exemption is likely to be attacked by economists, who argue that to be effective a carbon emissions system must be broadly based to share the huge costs. If one sector is exempted it increases costs on other sectors, such as energy-producing industries.
The Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists has estimated Australia has the potential to store up to a billion tonnes of carbon a year for the next 40 years through improved pasture management and farm practices. The group says if Australia were to capture just 15 per cent of this capacity, it would offset the equivalent of 25 per cent of our current annual greenhouse emissions over that period. Under the new concessions farmers will be compensated for such carbon offsets, opening up new sources of income.
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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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.
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."