Against the long history of huge temperature variation in the earth's climate (ice ages etc.), the .6 of one degree average rise reported for the entire 20th century by the United Nations (a rise so small that you would not be able to detect such a difference personally without instruments) shows in fact that the 20th century was a time of exceptional temperature stability.

There is an "ascetic instinct" (or perhaps a "survivalist instinct") in many people that causes them to delight in going without material comforts. Monasteries and nunneries were once full of such people -- with the Byzantine stylites perhaps the most striking example. Many Greenies (other than Al Gore and his Hollywood pals) have that instinct too but in the absence of strong orthodox religious committments they have to convince themselves that the world NEEDS them to live in an ascetic way. So their personal emotional needs lead them to press on us all a delusional belief that the planet needs "saving".

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21 November, 2007

Some things the IPCC has ignored

An email from David Whitehouse [david@davidwhitehouse.com]

Some media commentators have told us that the IPCC's "Synthesis" report has settled the science of global warming beyond doubt and that alternative approaches or indeed modifications to the CO2 greenhouse warming effect have lost the scientific argument. Certainly the working hypothesis of CO2 induced global warming is a good one that stands on good physical principles but let us not pretend our understanding extends too far or that the working hypothesis is a sufficient explanation for what is going on.

Clearly the world of the past 30 years is warmer than the previous decades and there is abundant evidence (in the northern hemisphere at least) that the world is responding to those elevated temperatures, though not yet the Polar Bears.

However, it was a pity the Synthesis report did not look in more detail at the recent warming trend the Earth has experienced - that has taken place since about 1980, as this and the rising CO2 levels are surely at the heart of the problem. Had this warm period not occurred we would have no talk of global warming and perhaps, as happened in the 1970's, we would fear a new Ice Age! This omission means that, contrary to what Ban Ki-Moon said, the Synthesis report has not answered so many questions relating to global warming or what will happen in the future. It seems that one can only understand what is going on (and make predictions) if one's vision is narrow and one talks in soundbites.

The fact that the recent warming period can be divided into two distinct periods is surely instructive and has a direct bearing on the IPCC's projections for the future and its mitigation strategies. The period 1980 -98 was one of rapid warming - a temperature anomaly of about 0.6 degrees C or 0.3 deg C per decade (CO2 rose from 340ppm to 370ppm). Since then the global temperature has been flat (whilst the CO2 has risen from 370ppm to 380ppm) meaning that the global temperature is about 0.3 deg less than it would have been had the rapid increase continued. (This leads me to suggest, slightly tongue-in-cheek, that there has been global cooling in the past decade as a decrease in the increase of temperature is a cooling!) The 1980 - 98 increase is generally similar to the increase seen between 1910 and 1940 which was 0.6 deg C in 30 years. It may be that the current flatlining of global temperature will be similar to that seen between 1940 and 1980 in that it will be followed by another increase (as the UK's Met Office believes will commence in 2009) but we don't know.

Incidentally, all the indications are that the global temperature of 2007 will be the coolest since 2000. This is interesting as there have been no significant volcanic events and no La Nina cooling.

How can it be that the atmosphere has responded so differently to a steady increase in CO2 levels and the constant temperature forcing that implies? As I argued in a previous post to CCNet (25th October 2007) the flat temperature of the past decade is difficult to explain. Adding reflective aerosols to the atmosphere (a byproduct of greenhouse gas emissions or volcanoes) is contrived and requires unlikely circumstances. Other explanations such as the ocean cooling effect of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation or the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation are also difficult to adjust so that they exactly compensate for the increasing upward temperature drag of rising CO2.

Also disappointing in the IPCC report was the lack of mention of the uncertainties involving solar effects and what they could mean for future predictions of global warming. There is a growing school of thought that suggests that the next solar cycle, cycle 24, could be weak and possibly the start of a prolonged period of low activity. There are certainly signs of a decline after a significant increase in solar activity throughout most of the last century. In the past when this has occurred the Earth has cooled though by what mechanism is unknown.

Despite what has been said the Sun is still an important factor to consider, more so if the temperature flatlining continues. It was thought (by climatologists) that solar driven climate change was too small to be detected but recent studies of decadal solar influences show they can be detected. Mostly their influence is small but there are huge differences that point to unknown amplification effects.

In the past few years we have been learning more and more about such things as differential solar heating, trade wind effects, solar induced upwelling of cooler water in the oceans and the fact that solar activity alters the interaction between the Earth's surface and the atmosphere in driving fundamental convection cells. In the past decade we have also discovered that the cloudy lower atmosphere absorbs more visible and IR radiation than previously thought. It has also been realised relatively recently that the IR from the sun varies more than visible. In addition, the unexpectedly large global decadal cycle of 0.1 deg C seen at an altitude of 2 km cannot easily be explained.

The point is that we cannot predict the future until we understand these things. Clearly the Earth's natural state is not to have so much CO2 in its atmosphere and it would be prudent to reduce it. But let's acknowledge the considerable scientific uncertainties and differentiate between the effects of increasing global temperatures on the one hand and increasing CO2 levels on the other.

I have heard it said, by scientists, journalists and politicians, that the time for debate is over and that further scientific debate only causes delay in action. As scientists we must never bend our desire to know what is going on to any political cause, however noble. The science is fascinating, the ramifications profound, but we are fools or perhaps politicians if we convince ourselves that we know more than we do and when we are satisfied to describe such a complicated system in a soundbite.




Greenie people-hate on display again

Halting population growth in developing countries should be part of a global strategy to reduce mankind's impact on the environment, according to an eminent expatriate Australian scientist. Immediate past president of the Royal Society, Professor Lord Robert May said that, given the threat of climate change, a declining global population was "a prerequisite" if humanity was to achieve a sustainable ecological footprint in the future. Addressing the Lowy Institute in Sydney last night, Lord May said a priority was educating and empowering women, "particularly in those cultures where this is not currently the case".

Lord May, a former chief scientific adviser to the British government who was made a companion of the Order of Australia in 1998, said this would be assisted by achieving universal primary school education and promoting gender equality. The United Nations estimates 700 million women, or two thirds of all those married or in stable unions, use some method of contraception. "In my view, religious beliefs or other ideological prejudices prompt some major international organisations to oppose contraception, forbidding distribution of condoms or even advice about fertility control," Lord May said.

He said it was encouraging that in the past year global fertility rates fell below replacement levels for the first time in recorded history, with the average female now having slightly less than one female child. Global population growth is predicted to increase to 9 billion by 2050, driven by strong growth in developing countries, while declining birth rates in developed countries create their own inter-generational problems.

Lord May warned that cutting population alone would not address environmental problems, as smaller populations tended to be associated with increasing standards of living and higher environmental impacts per capita. He warned of the growing threat of conflicts and mass movements of people as the world's population fought over limited water supplies and other resources. "All this rolls together with rapid and continuing advances in information technology, which simultaneously makes things better and worse," he said. "Better because we can more easily and effectively co-ordinate action, once motivated to do so; worse because in such a global village the massive inequities between groups are clearly exposed."

Lord May warned that the re-emergence of fundamentalism in the world was a reaction against the liberating force of the new information age.

Source




GREEN LOGIC: 'NATURE' ENDORSES HUMAN EXTINCTION

In the latest Nature, Chris Thomas says:

"This year the baiji river dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer), a victim of the pollution and boat traffic of China's Yangtze river, was added to the list of creatures on the verge of extinction. Is this part of the sixth mass extinction in 450 million years, or does the recent spate of losses caused by humans represent a blip in the history of life on Earth? Michael Novacek's Terra takes stock of the situation and provides an opportunity to learn from the past. ...

Of course, we shall solve some of these issues with technological fixes. Yet if we maintain 9 billion avaricious people on Earth for the next millennium, a sixth extinction event seems inevitable. The geological perspective of Terra is bizarrely reassuring. Humans will presumably be gone within a few million years, perhaps sooner. If the past that Novacek describes is a guide to the future, global ecosystem processes will be restored some tens of thousands to a million years after our demise, and new forms of life over the ensuing millions of years will exploit the denuded planet we leave behind. Thirty million years on, things will be back to normal, albeit a very different `normal' from before. It is good to be optimistic. The problem is living here in the meantime."

Thomas is "optimistic" that humans and any descendants with a remotely similar population or resource-intensive technology will be extinct in a million years. Yet if a plague, for example, were to produce this outcome within the next ten years, I'm pretty sure most everyone would see this as a catastrophe of the highest possible order. So how does this become a good thing if it happens in the next million years?

Source




BRAVE GREEN WORLD: WHO NEEDS ASTRONOMY? THOSE GUYS MIGHT DISCOVER SOMETHING AWKWARD

Much safer to spend the money on a metastasizing bureaucracy

British astronomers were last night shocked by a sudden funding cut that will prevent them having access to two of the world's most advanced telescopes. A Government funding council yesterday announced it would pull out of the Gemini Observatory - twin 26ft telescopes in Hawaii and Chile which together can be used to observe the entire sky. The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) said it was pulling out of the observatory, in which Britain has a 23 per cent stake, despite the Government having invested 35 million pounds in building it.

Prof Michael Rowan-Robinson, President of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), said: "This decision is a serious mistake and a shock to all of us. "If it goes ahead it will deny UK scientists access to large telescopes in the northern hemisphere and hinder their ability to study almost half the sky. I call on the STFC to rethink this proposal."

FULL STORY here




POOR INDIE: DAILY DOOM DOESN'T SELL

The Independent, the `compact' UK newspaper known as the Indie (the Independent on Sunday being the Sindie), which is infamous for its doom-laden front pages on `global warming' (and many other PC topics), is clearly in trouble. I have just been trawling through a few interesting reports and facts:

Writing in The Observer (November 11), Peter Preston comments that "the relaunched, more anorexic Independent on Sunday is 8.37 per cent off October 2006 (with only 132,000 UK readers prepared to stump up 1.80 pounds)" and that, at the newsstand, the "Independent, with not much of a net presence at all, is down 6.72 per cent in a year." The circulation of the Indie in August, 2007 was a mere 240,116 [according to the UK ABC (Audited Bureau of Circulations)], a 5.37% drop from November 2006, and way, way below The Guardian, The Telegraph, and The Times.

Moreover, unlike The Guardian (c. 18 million unique users), the poor Indie is unlikely to be saved by its website, which must be one of the dullest in the world. The word `anorexic' again crosses one's mind.

And now, today, the `Financial Section' of The Times reveals that "Denis O'Brien, the Irish telecoms billionaire, has called on Sir Anthony O'Reilly to sell The Independent newspaper and resign as the chief executive of the company behind the loss-making London-based title. `The Independent has to go, as do other vanity projects,' Mr O'Brien told The Times in an uncompromising interview."

Well, I never like the loss of media and debating outlets, but I have to say that the demise, if that were ever to happen, of the Indie would bring fewer tears to my eyes than most. As a purveyor of gloom and doom, it has been second to none. Even one environmentalist confided to me that, when on the tube or the bus, she felt she had to read it hidden between less lurid covers.

Still, it would be a pity. Over the years, the Indie has proved a rich seam for bloggers and commentators alike - even beats the old Guardian, and that is saying something these days. Clearly doom and gloom on a daily basis doesn't in the end sell. After all, why bother to read a newspaper when the triffids are lurking behind every page?

Source




A fit of peak

The doom-laden vision of a post-oil world put forward in a radical new documentary is as crude as the black stuff that gushes from the ground

With crude oil prices pushing up towards $100 per barrel, it's a good time to release a documentary that argues we're in imminent danger from dwindling oil supply. According to A Crude Awakening, demand for oil is accelerating while supply has peaked and will shortly go into rapid decline. The result will be social disruption on a scale unseen since the Great Depression. Sounds scary - but in reality these arguments seem as crude as the black stuff gushing from the ground.

The film, made by Swiss journalist Basil Gelpke and Irish producer Ray McCormack, is a diatribe against the evils of an oil-based economy. Opening with a narration befitting a horror movie, we are told that oil is the `devil's excrement' and the `blood of the earth'. Through interviews with a number of experts, activists and politicians, Gelpke and McCormack argue that developed economies, most notably the USA, are utterly dependent on oil. Farming, transportation, plastics - in fact, the production of pretty much everything - depends on a supply of oil. For example, every calorie of food energy we produce requires 10 calories of energy inputs - mostly oil. The vast majority of travel, too, is powered by oil pumped from the ground.

Supply and demand

The problem, according to the film, is that production may have peaked or is just about to do so. The world is currently using roughly 85million barrels of oil per day (1). (A barrel of oil is 42 US gallons or 159 litres.) Demand is booming due to rapid economic growth in China and India and steadily increasing demand in the developed world. The filmmakers argue that there have been no new big oilfield discoveries since the late 1960s when huge quantities of oil were discovered in the North Sea and Alaska.

As it happens, the film's opening in the UK coincided with an announcement by the Brazilian government of a new offshore field, Tupi Sul, that could ultimately provide eight billion barrels of oil. But this will not come fully on-stream for a few years and will only provide a small portion of the world's growing oil needs each year (2). In fact, the total oil from this field would only supply current levels of world consumption for about three months. Worse, according to the film, the declared remaining reserves of oil in many members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) may be greatly overstated. In the past, OPEC members have had an interest in exaggerating their remaining stocks since OPEC production quotas have been based on declared reserves.

The really big fields with long potential reserves are in the Middle East - hardly a stable region. This question of stability informs comments in the film by Stanford politics professor Terry Lynn Karl, who provides a fairly outrageous example of the war-for-oil thesis. Karl believes that the two Gulf Wars were driven by a desire to seize and control oil reserves - which is slightly bizarre, given that Iraq's oil could more easily and cheaply have been controlled by propping up Saddam rather than removing him. But this war-for-oil thesis apparently knows no bounds, with Karl glibly suggesting that everything from the civil war in Sudan to the two World Wars can be put down `in part' to a scramble for oil.

Solving the problem

The film is already showing its age, however. Much of the discussion in the film is about how there is more oil under the ground, but that it is not economically viable to dig it up. As one US oil worker notes, in incredulous tones, the oil price would have to be $50 a barrel for it to make sense. But since prices have now shot up to nearer $100 a barrel, a range of possibilities opens up, even if current high nominal prices are to some extent a product of the weak dollar.

Suddenly, getting that oil out of the ground is good business. Other opportunities arise: expensive exploration in relatively uncharted territories starts to make sense because the gamble could have such a huge pay-off; exploration methods themselves can improve; finding ways to recover a greater percentage of the oil in any particular field would be a boon; producing liquid fuels from the world's abundant stocks of coal - pointless when oil itself is cheap - is now practical and economic. For all the severe limitations of the free market, it is quite clear that a rising oil price provides strong incentives to explore both oil-based and non-oil avenues for future energy production.

But the filmmakers seem uninterested in the possibility that declining oil stocks are a problem that could be solved. `The demand is so huge there is nothing we can imagine to replace oil in those quantities', suggests David L Goodstein, professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology. Instead, A Crude Awakening provides a litany of disastrous consequences that must inevitably result from peak oil. Particularly enthusiastic doom-sayers include the rather excitable Colin Campbell, a former oil geologist and founder of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO), and Matthew Savinar, whose website, Life After the Oil Crash, greets us with the cheery thought that: `Civilization as we know it is coming to an end soon.' The film draws to a close with footage of an Amish man driving his pony and trap, as if to say that this is the future of transport.

Against the pessimism of the peak oil theorists is the reality that we do not `worship' oil nor are we addicted to it. Oil is simply an extremely cheap and very effective solution to a number of technical problems. If oil production does decline - and it would be wrong to simply assume that as yet - we'll have to find new solutions instead. In the short term, no single alternative fuel source will take the place of oil. But unless oil production suddenly collapses, which is unlikely, replacements only need to substitute for part of what oil would otherwise supply in the short-term. Bio-fuels, clean coal, nuclear power, hydrogen, solar and wind power will all, to some extent, have a part to play - along with technologies that have not yet been developed.

Greater efficiency will surely also kick in. When oil is cheaper than bottled water or milk, there is little incentive to find more efficient modes of transport or alternative precursors for chemicals currently produced from oil. The oft-quoted saying `We didn't stop using horses because we ran out of hay' is very true. Long before supplies completely run out, oil and the technologies that demand it, like the internal combustion engine, will be replaced by something else. In all likelihood, those substitutes will be better than the technology we currently have.

A crude outlook

The notion of peak oil appeals to a mindset that cannot believe that the future holds anything but disaster. This outlook can be found in all manner of discussions from the `obesity epidemic' to the pensions crisis precipitated by the `demographic timebomb' to catastrophic climate change. This mood was beautifully summed up by the journalist and former Independent editor Rosie Boycott as she chaired a question-and-answer session with the co-producer of A Crude Awakening, Ray McCormack, in London last Friday. Responding to the suggestion from the audience that the refusal to see that oil has peaked is `macho', Boycott said:

`Completely hard-wired into every one of us is a belief that literally since we came out of the swamp we've been in this thing called Progress. And while it may have brought ups and downs, it's never let us down. You can chart that things have got more extraordinary and more amazing and diseases have been solved and everything has been solved. I'm in my fifties and I've grown up as a child believing that science solved everything. It's only in the last few years that I've realised that science can't solve some things and science makes things worse. for the first time in all these millions and millions of years that we've been here, we're actually going to go backwards.'

Boycott's outlook is widely shared, particularly amongst former radicals like herself (she was once at the forefront of feminist publishing, co-founding Spare Rib and Virago Books). Society, it is believed, can no longer move forward and, in fact, the very attempt to solve problems will actually make things worse.

This worldview cannot account for the continuing expansion of both wealth and the duration and quality of life. That does not mean that there are no problems in the world today - there are many massive problems to be tackled. New problems, some of them the product of human activity, will emerge. But the most serious possibility that society might really `go backwards' will come from the belief that Progress is a failure. Boycott's comments are a very good illustration of the societal suicide note that many people seem anxious to write.

Oil production has almost certainly not peaked. Even if it has, it's high time we moved on to smarter technologies. But if the ideas that underpin A Crude Awakening become truly popular, then civilisation itself may well have peaked, disintegrating into a heap of self-doubt.

Source

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For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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20 November, 2007

Swiss Snow Makes 50-year Record

Swiss ski resorts are expecting a record season after promising early snowfall, it has been reported. Ski break spots including Davos, St Antonien and Braunwald have experienced exceptionally strong snowfall for so early in the season, swissinfo has reported.Last weekend, some 62 cm of the white stuff fell in the eastern resort of Davos, while St Antonien received 64 cm and Braunwald got 72 cm of snow on Sunday, states national weather service Meteo Swiss.

According to the report, Switzerland has not received such a strong start to its winter ski season since 1952, with the amount of snow being swept to the southern areas by the wind cited as a particularly interesting feature of the weather.

Resorts are said to be anticipating a busy ski season, with many readying themselves for a rush of bookings as reports of the good weather disseminate.The Ski Club of Great Britain described the prospects for Verbier, Saas Fee and Engelberg as "promising" last week.

Source




UK Scientist predicts 'People will listen, increasingly less over time' to alarmist climate predictions

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] and the average intake of the average American would be a mere 2,400 calories (would that it were!).

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). The second assessment report was then issued in 1995, the third in 2001, and, of course, the draft fourth assessment report on Saturday.

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. So it comes as no surprise to note that the latest IPCC Draft Report's panel yet again declares that action must be taken within a decade or so if we are to save the world from 'global warming'.

This is all so reminiscent of Lewis Carroll's nonsense masterpiece, 'The Hunting of the Snark':

"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried

As he landed his crew with care;

Supporting each man on the top of the tide

By a finger entwined in his hair."

"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:

That alone should encourage the crew.

Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:

What I tell you three times is true."

The IPCC's crew, and their fellow passengers, have been hunting their particular snark for nearly twenty years, and their desperation is getting feverish, worse than that of Carroll's Bellman. In their case: "What I tell you four times is true."

Indeed, one wonders if the IPCC is functioning by J. B. S. Haldane's three great theorems: the Bellman's Theorem ("What I tell you three times is true"); Aunt Jobisca's Theorem ("It's a fact the whole world knows" - from The Pobble Who Had No Toes by Edward Lear); and, Oresme's Theorem ("If you say it often enough or hear it enough you will accept it as truth" - derived from Nicole Oresme (1350), On the Marvels of Nature.

I understand that Oresme invented the graph - how he would have loved the infamous 'hockey stick'). Yet, this particular snark remains elusive, the pobble can't find its toes, and the acorn keeps falling on Chicken Little's head.

After 50 years of terminal decades, the world goes on, economies grow, CO2 rises, and more people become just that little bit better off. As I point out in 'Reality, Rhetoric, and Risk' (November 17), we shall no more land the IPCC's snark than the pobble will find its toes.

People will listen (increasingly less over time), and maybe, for a short period, even believe it to be 'true', but - "It's a fact the whole world knows" - we can't do a blind thing about it (as one senior Labour cabinet member was reported to me to have admitted in an aside at a Conference). Life will go on to hunt for new, different snarks and lost toes. Indeed, we may even be able to modify genetically that poor old pobble.

Source




Prof. Stott on the unrealism of the new IPCC summary

On the very day that the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, issues its latest, and 4th, Draft Report (.pdf), and Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General, employs his rhetoric to pressurize states to act on climate change before the Bali talks about the UN climate convention and the Kyoto Protocol, which open on December 3, the hard reality of climate-change economics and politics strikes in the heart of London.

As The Guardian (November 17) reveals, `Climate change department faces 300 million pound cuts': "The measures at Defra [Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] have become necessary, in part, because the department has been overwhelmed by huge bills for a series of disasters, from the foot and mouth outbreak to blunders over the payments of billions of pounds of EU cash to farmers. The ministry's management board was told this week that it had to find an additional 270m popunds from its main budget on top of savings agreed only a month ago. The Guardian has seen a document which reveals ministers are to be presented with a package for 130m of immediate cuts with radical options for another 140m of savings. This is in addition to a 5% year-on-year cuts on administrative costs.

Defra has not fully recovered from the 200m cuts imposed by the Treasury last year after the department mismanaged the biggest reform of agricultural subsidy in a generation. The new cuts are expected to affect all 50 of Defra's agencies,dealing with canals, animal health, waste groups, national parks, forestry, fisheries , sustainable development and environmental protection."

What neither the IPCC, nor Mr. Ban, nor most media commentators seem to grasp is that the precautionary principle works both ways. Which is riskier, trying to follow the climate-change rhetoric of the IPCC and Green groups by warping world economics and politics to deal (impossibly) with climate change, or facing up to the economics and politics of the real world.

Completely changing the world's economic and political basis for something that actually may not happen - and will most certainly not occur exactly as predicted - is for me a much, much riskier proposition, especially when one takes into account the fact that there will be benefits, as well as problems, from climate changes.

Just remember that, if one takes all the models that exist for climate change, not just those of the IPCC, the error bar is for a change of between -2 degrees Celsius to nearly 7 degrees Celsius (a nine degree Celsius error bar in all). Even I think that climate is likely to vary (all the time) within such a range. It tells us nothing. It is a tautology.

Moreover, what Mr. Ban demands just won't happen. Indeed, it can't happen, as the little Defra story encapsulates so perfectly, whatever the IPCC, Mr. Ban, Hillary Clinton, Gordon Brown, and `Dave' Cameron might say. Let's face the basic facts: to achieve cuts that would have any meaningful impact in terms of the IPCC's view would demand four billion people losing their livelihoods, the grounding of all planes, the dry-docking of all ships, the crushing of all cars, and the closing down of all fossil-fuel fired power stations, and all within the next ten years. Now that would be a disaster.

The conclusion is clear: whatever the politicians' rhetoric, reality will ensure that, in practice, we will view the risks quite differently from the IPCC and Mr. Ban. Nevertheless, all sorts of well-meaning to frankly barking-mad attempts will be made to force people into this or that lifestyle, some of which could undermine our capacity to adapt to whatever climate does at any particular time, whether hot, wet, cold, or dry, or all at once. But worse, the ability of the rich world to help the poorer world could be reduced significantly.

In truth, the latest IPCC report says nothing new. It is still the same old tale with just a bit more political pep. But the global response will be the same. Reality will see to that. Yet further, never lose sight of the fact that `The Great Global Warming Story' appeals to some people precisely because it can be employed to intervene into everybody's life, from the poorest rice farmer to the richest entrepreneur. The risk of this is greater, both politically and economically, than any IPCC model-generated projections. After all, we need some social and economic discounting: precisely why should a poorer generation pay for what will still be a richer generation, even if some `global warming' were to occur?

Interestingly, reporters at the BBC are beginning to see that there might be a powerful reality check to the IPCC mantra, witness Richard Black's latest piece (November 17), `Tackling the fossil fuel juggernaut': "One suspects that in the real world it is still liable to get side-swiped by the seductive juggernaut of business-as-usual. In that case, we will have a trackside view if the impacts projected in this seminal IPCC climate treatise come to pass." Reality at the last. Reality, Rhetoric, And Risk

Source




Sun and global warming: A cosmic connection?

By Richard Black, Environment correspondent, BBC News

The article below does give a good airing to the case for a solar influence on terrestrial warming but it of course slants its coverage toward the conventional view. Two rather amusing features are that Lockwood refuses to offer a refutation of Svensmark on the exceedingly flimsy ground that he does not like where Svensmark has posted his paper! If he DID have any answers, he would be keen to offer them. The second amusing thing is that the BBC author says that the acid test will be what the planet does henceforth. Will it continue warming or not? That it has ALREADY stopped warming (since 1998) is conveniently not taken into account

In February 2007, depending on what newspaper you read, you might have seen an article detailing a "controversial new theory" of global warming. The idea was that variations in cosmic rays penetrating the Earth's atmosphere would change the amount of cloud cover, in turn changing our planet's reflectivity, and so the temperature at its surface. This, it was said, could be the reason why temperatures have been seen to be varying so much over the Earth's history, and why they are rising now.

The theory was detailed in a book, The Chilling Stars, written by Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark and British science writer Nigel Calder, which appeared on the shelves a week after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had published its landmark report concluding it was more than 90% likely that humankind's emissions of greenhouse gases were warming the planet.

In truth, the theory was not new; Dr Svensmark's team had proposed it a decade earlier, while the idea of a cosmic ray influence on weather dates back to 1959 and US researcher Edward Ney. The bigger question is whether it amounts to a theory of global warming at all.

Over the course of the Earth's history, the main factor driving changes in its climate has been that the amount of energy from the Sun varies, either because of wobbles in the Earth's orbit or because the Sun's power output changes. Most noticeably, it changes with the 11-year solar cycle, first identified in the mid-1800s by astronomers who noticed periodic variations in the number of sunspots. If it varied enough, it could change the Earth's surface temperature markedly. So is it?

"Across the solar cycle, the Sun's energy output varies only by about 0.1%," says Sami Solanki from the Max-Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany. "When you look across much longer timescales, you also see changes only of about 0.1%. So just considering directly variations in energy coming from the Sun, this is not enough to explain the climatic changes we have seen and are seeing now."

This is why scientists have been investigating mechanisms which could amplify the changes in solar output, scaling up the 0.1% variation into an effect that could explain the temperature rise of almost half a degree Celsius that we have seen at the Earth's surface in just the last few decades.

One is Joanna Haigh from Imperial College, London, UK. She realised that although the Sun's overall energy output changes by 0.1%, it changes much more in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum. "The changes in the UV are much larger, between 1% and 10%," she says. "And that primarily has an impact in the stratosphere (the upper atmosphere) - UV is absorbed by ozone in the stratosphere and also produces ozone, and this warms the air."

Using computer models of climate, Dr Haigh's team showed that warming in the stratosphere could change the way energy is distributed across the troposphere, the lower atmosphere, changing wind and weather patterns. But not by much. "We found it might raise temperatures by a maximum of half to one Celsius in certain regions," she says. "But in terms of an impact on the global average temperature, it's small, maybe about 0.2C." Which is not enough to explain the warming that has occurred since the late 1970s.

Henrik Svensmark and his collaborators at the Danish National Space Center (DNSC) believe the missing link between small solar variations and large temperature changes on Earth are cosmic rays. "I think the Sun is the major driver of climate change," he says, "and the reason I'm saying that is that if you look at historical temperature data and then solar activity and cosmic ray activity, it actually fits very beautifully.

"If CO2 is a very important climate driver then you would expect to see its effect on all timescales; and for example when you look at the last 500 million years, or the last 10,000 years, the correlation between changes in CO2 and climate are very poor."

When hugely energetic galactic cosmic rays - actually particles - crash into the top of the atmosphere, they set in train a sequence of events which leads to the production of ions in the lower atmosphere. The theory is that this encourages the growth of tiny aerosol particles around which water vapour can condense, eventually aiding the formation of clouds.

And the link to the Sun? It is because cosmic rays are partially deflected by the solar wind, the stream of charged particles rushing away from the Sun, and the magnetic field it carries. A weaker solar wind means more cosmic rays penetrating the atmosphere, hence more clouds and a cooler Earth.

The theory makes some intuitive sense because over the last century the Sun has been unusually active - which means fewer cosmic rays, and a warmer climate on Earth. "We reconstructed solar activity going back 11,000 years," relates Sami Solanki. "And across this period, the level of activity we are seeing now is very high - we coined the term 'grand maximum' to describe it. We still have the 11-year modulation on top of the long-term trend, but on average the Sun has been brighter and the cosmic ray flux lower."

There is evidence too that cosmic rays and climate have been intertwined over timescales of millennia in the Earth's past. And the theory received some experimental backing when in October 2006, Henrik Svensmark's team published laboratory research showing that as the concentration of negative ions rose in air, so did the concentration of particles which could eventually become condensation nuclei.

Other scientists, meanwhile, had started putting the idea to the test in the real world. In 1947, British meteorologists began deploying instruments in various sites across the country to measure sunlight. Whether through foresight or luck, they included one feature which was to prove very useful; the capacity to measure the relative amounts of direct and diffuse light. It is the difference between a sunny day, when light streams directly from above, and a cloudy day, when it seems to struggle in from everywhere, and photographers give up and go home.

Giles Harrison from Reading University realised that the UK Met Office's record of hourly readings from its sunlight stations could be used to plot the extent of cloud cover over a period going back more than 50 years; the larger the ratio of diffuse to direct light, the cloudier the skies.

By chance, cosmic rays have been recorded continuously over almost exactly the same period. So Dr Harrison's team compared the two records, looking for a correlation between more intense cosmic rays and more clouds. "We concluded that there is an effect, but that it is small - 'small but significant' was how we described it," he recalls. "It varied UK cloud cover only by about 2%, although we suggested it would have a larger effect on centennial timescales; and it's difficult to assess what effect this would have on global surface temperature." He concludes it would be premature to lay global warming at the door of cosmic rays. Perhaps surprisingly, you will find no references to his work in The Chilling Stars.

In July, Mike Lockwood from the UK's Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory attempted a definitive answer to the question with what appeared to be a simple method. He simply looked at the changing cosmic ray activity over the last 30 years, and asked whether it could explain the rising temperatures. His conclusion was that it could not. Since about 1985, he found, the cosmic ray count had been increasing, which should have led to a temperature fall if the theory is correct - instead, the Earth has been warming. "This should settle the debate," he told me at the time.

It has not. Last month Dr Svensmark posted a paper on the DNSC website that claimed to be a comprehensive rebuttal. "The argument that Mike Lockwood put forward was that they didn't see any solar signal in the surface temperature data," he says. "And when you look at [temperatures in] the troposphere or the oceans, then you do see a solar signal, it's very clear."

Dr Lockwood disagrees; he says he has re-analysed the issue using atmospheric temperatures, and his previous conclusion stands. And he thinks the Svensmark team has been guilty of poor practice by not publishing their argument in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. "Lots of people have been asking me how I respond to it; but how should I respond to something which is just posted on a research institute's website?" he asks. "This isn't on, because the report title says it is a 'comprehensive rebuttal'; if it were that, then it would be his duty to publish it in a scientific journal and clean up the literature - that's how science filters out what is incorrect, and how it comes to a consensus view as to what is correct." This dispute presumably has some distance to run.

But Mike Lockwood's larger conclusion that current warming has nothing to do with solar changes is backed up by others - notably the IPCC, which concluded earlier this year that since temperatures began rising rapidly in the 1970s, the contribution of humankind's greenhouse gas emissions has outweighed that of the Sun by a factor of about 13 to one.

Even though misguided journalists have sometimes mistaken his work as implying a solar cause to modern-day warming, Sami Solanki agrees with the IPCC verdict. "Since 1970, the cosmic ray flux has not changed markedly while the global temperature has shown a rapid rise," he says. "And that lack of correlation is proof that the Sun doesn't cause the warming we are seeing now."

Even to prove that the link between cosmic rays and cloud cover matters in the real world needs a lot more work, observes Joanna Haigh. "You need to demonstrate a whole long chain of events - that the atmosphere is ionised, then that the ionised particles act to nucleate the condensation of water vapour, then that you form droplets, and then that you get clouds; and you have to show it's important in comparison to other sources of nucleation. "And that hasn't been demonstrated. Proponents of this mechanism have tended to extrapolate their results beyond what is reasonable from the evidence."

And Giles Harrison believes climate sceptics need to apply the same scepticism to the cosmic ray theory as they do to greenhouse warming - particularly those who say there are too many holes in our understanding of how clouds behave in the man-made greenhouse. "There is some double-speak going on, as uncertainties apply to many aspects of clouds," he says. "If clouds have to be understood better to understand greenhouse warming, then, as we have only an emerging understanding of the electrical aspects of aerosols and non-thunderstorm clouds, that is probably also true of any effect of cosmic rays on clouds."

Dr Svensmark agrees it would be wrong for anyone to claim the case has been proved. "If anyone said that there is proof that the Sun or greenhouse gases alone are responsible for the present-day warming, then that would be a wrong statement because we don't really have proofs as such in the natural sciences," he says.

Two events loom on the horizon that might settle the issue once and for all; one shaped by human hands, one entirely natural. At Cern, the giant European physics facility, an experiment called Cloud is being constructed which will research the notion that cosmic rays can stimulate the formation of droplets and clouds. There may be some results within three or four years.

By then, observations suggest that the Sun's output may have started to wane from its "grand maximum". If it does, and if Henrik Svensmark is right, we should then see cosmic rays increase and global temperatures start to fall; if that happens, he can expect to see a Nobel Prize and thousands of red-faced former IPCC members queuing up to hand back the one they have just received.

But if the Sun wanes and temperatures on our planet continue to rise, as the vast majority of scientists in the field believe, the solar-cosmic ray concept of global warming can be laid to eternal rest. And if humankind has done nothing to stem the rise in greenhouse gas emissions by then, it will be even harder to begin the task.

Source




Australia: Greens to fight Victorian desal plant

Greenies constantly block dam-building and have as a result given most of Australia a water shortage. Governments are now trying to fix that shortage by building desalination plants. But desal is no good either the Greens now say. They clearly WANT us to suffer severe water shortages. I think all known Greenies should have their town water cut off. That might bring them down to earth with a bump. Why let them benefit from what they irresponsibly oppose?. Andrew Bolt goes into the matter further

GREENS leader Bob Brown received a hero's welcome at Kilcunda Beach yesterday as he pledged to do all he could to stop the Victorian Government building a desalination plant. About 300 people turned out to the sixth protest rally in as many months aimed at stopping the $3 billion project. Senator Brown said if the community stuck together there was a good chance the desalination plant would not be built. He described the desalination plant as a monstrosity that wasn't needed, and said that he would take the fight against it to Canberra.

"We determinedly take this into the national Parliament and fight it every step of the way until the only evaporation out of here is those planning for this wrong-headed project," he said. "Politicians who don't listen to the community ultimately suffer the consequences."

Senator Brown said he was more confident heading into Saturday's election than he had been for the past four. The Tasmanian senator, who entered Parliament's Upper House the year John Howard became Prime Minister, said there was a real mood for change across Australia.

Support for the Greens, who could win the balance of power in the Senate, continues to grow, with yesterday's Galaxy poll in the Sunday Herald Sun showing 11 per cent support for the party in marginal seats. "I think the Government is going to lose and that there will be a big move away from the big parties in the Senate," he said. "We are going to have to work with one or other of the major parties if we get the balance of power, and we will do that responsibly. "Leaving either one of them in control of both houses of parliament is not only bad democracy but, everywhere I go, people don't want it."

For the first time, the environment is a crucial election issue across the country with some polls showing 80 per cent of people saying it will affect their vote. Greens policies including drawing up a plan to phase out coal exports, reducing emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, scrapping university fees, forgiving HECS debts and redirecting the $3 billion private health insurance rebates into public health and hospitals.

Senator Brown said Mr Howard was out of touch with the public and his 11 years in office had been plagued with injustice including the treatment of refugees, the war in Iraq and a total disregard for the environment. After yesterday's rally, Senator Brown met Tony and Virginia Eke, whose land will be compulsorily acquired by the State Government to build the desalination plant. The couple have spent the past seven years building their dream of an eco-tourism spa and cottage retreat on the Wonthaggi coastline. "You are the first politician who has come here who is talking from the heart," Mr Eke told Senator Brown.

Source

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For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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19 November, 2007

Some more Greenie deception?

The NOAA website has a Caribou chart showing a big reduction in the herd birth rate. But if you click on the Taiga.net source link you will see a chart showing a rebound of the birth rate to near record levels in 2007. The question is, did NOAA just not update their site for two years or did they end in 2005 to hype fears? The Taiga net link explains that ups and downs in Caribou births are a natural fluctuation.




Comment on the latest IPCC scare

Post below lifted from Paul Biggs. See the original for links

The fourth and final part of the of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 Fourth Assessment Report has been published. The Summary for Policymakers of the Synthesis Report is available here or direct from the IPCC website.

The IPCC claim at least 90 per cent confidence in flawed computer modelled climate projections and that most of the warming in the past 50 years is due to human activity. Calls will be made for deep, damaging and costly cuts in CO2 emissions by developed nations, further underpinning the suspicion that the UN IPCC is more about wealth redistribution than climate change. The warnings from the likes of Prins and Rayner that the Kyoto Protocol was the wrong policy in the past, and is the wrong policy for the future, will go unheeded. Adaptation to inevitable, natural climate change and the development of secure energy sources is the only cost effective way forward in my view.

The highest solar activity for over 1000 years is already coming to an end and the next 11-year solar cycle is running late. The scene is set for a significant period of global cooling by 2020-30, yet our policymakers heed the false alarm call of continued warming by an IPCC that admits to a 'low' or 'very low' level of scientific understanding (LOSU) of the link between solar factors and climate.

The UK Government has published a very foolish, unilateral climate change bill which aims to cut the UK's 2 per cent contribution to global man-made CO2 emissions by 60 per cent. King Canute must be turning in his grave.




Green hero slammed as climate heretic

Prof. David Bellamy is Great Britain's best-known environmentalist, and has been for most of the last four decades. He has written and presented some 400 television programs on environmental issues, written 45 books, and published more than 80 scientific papers, in addition to holding down teaching posts in botany at two universities. He has founded or been president of prominent national organizations such as The Conservation Foundation, The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, Population Concern, Plantlife International, British Naturalists' Association, and Galapagos Conservation Trust, in addition to numerous grassroots bodies operating at the local level. Among his many honours has been the United Nations Environment Program Global 500 Award, the Duke of Edinburgh's Award for Underwater Research, Diver of the Year Award and the Order of the British Empire.

No mere academic and establishment man, this larger-than-life figure also has a striking record as an activist campaigner for green causes, starting with the 1967 Torrey Canyon supertanker disaster off the coast of England. He has led high-profile protests against needless road building and the loss of moors, and has been jailed for blockading the construction of a hydro dam that would have destroyed a Tasmanian rainforest.

But Prof. Bellamy is not green enough for much of Britain's environmental establishment, not since July 9, 2004, the day a full-page article by him appeared in London's Daily Mail, disputing the conventional wisdom on global warming. Prof. Bellamy has since been stripped of some of his prominent positions and become an environmental pariah to many. The article, entitled "What a load of poppycock!," was written in Prof. Bellamy's characteristic no-holds-barred style: "Whatever the experts say about the howling gales, thunder and lightning we've had over the past two days, of one thing we can be certain. Someone, somewhere -- and there is every chance it will be a politician or an environmentalist -- will blame the weather on global warming," his article began. "But they will be 100% wrong. Global warming -- at least the modern nightmare version -- is a myth."

Prof. Bellamy challenged the very premise behind global-warming concern, writing that "carbon dioxide is not the dreaded killer greenhouse gas that the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and the subsequent Kyoto Protocol five years later cracked it up to be. It is, in fact, the most important airborne fertilizer in the world, and without it there would be no green plants at all. ... "Increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, double it even, and this would produce a rise in plant productivity. Call me a biased old plant lover but that doesn't sound like much of a killer gas to me. Hooray for global warming is what I say, and so do a lot of my fellow scientists."

The reaction to Prof. Bellamy's decision to challenge orthodoxy -- a quality in him that environmentalists had until then admired -- was harsh. Plantlife International, the United Kingdom's leading charity dedicated to protecting wild plants, announced it "would be wrong to ask him to continue" as president, a post Prof. Bellamy had held for 15 years. The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, which manages 2,500 nature reserves across the United Kingdom, likewise announced it would not renew his presidency. As The Sunday Times headlined it, "Wildlife groups axe Bellamy as global warming 'heretic.' "

Individual environmentalists were often less respectful in abandoning him, suggesting he had become mentally incompetent, or in the pay of the oil industry. The derision from the environmental camp has not ended with the passage of time. "Looney IPCC debunker," "climate-change denying shill" and "the very sad and deluded David Bellamy," is how the Carbon Trust referred to him earlier this year, when Prof. Bellamy participated in a London protest of a report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC), which was releasing climate-change recommendations to the world's governments.

Prof. Bellamy, a passionate socialist as well as environmentalist, opposes government action to curb global warming because of the grave harm such actions cause. He fears that billions or even trillions of dollars could be diverted to "a problem that doesn't exist -- money that could be used in umpteen better ways: fighting world hunger, providing clean water, developing alternative energy sources, improving our environment, creating jobs." Ill-advised climate-change policies also lead to the dedication of vast amounts of land to inefficient wind farms, he adds, mindlessly marring the beauty of the British countryside.

David Bellamy has come full circle in his four-decade-long career as an environmental activist. In the 1960s, before the era of environmental activism, his was a lonely voice decrying environmental damage by an official establishment insensitive to any view but its own, and dedicated to the conventional wisdom of the times.

He then became an exemplar of the establishment, and helped make the environment a feature of the establishment as well. Now his is a lonely voice once more, again on the outs with an insensitive officialdom. The one constant throughout the decades: Prof. Bellamy's relentlessness in his fight for what he believes to be right.

CV OF A DENIER:

David Bellamy, a botanist, is Special Professor of Geography at the University of Nottingham and Honorary Professor of the University of Central Queensland. His most recent paper, 'Climate stability: an inconvenient proof' in the refereed Civil Engineering journal of the Institution of Civil Engineers in May 2007, demonstrates that, in the unlikely event that the widely prophesied doubling of carbon dioxide levels from natural, pre-industrial levels occurs, the warming would amount to less than one degree C of global warming. He received his doctorate from the University of London.

Source




Kentucky Democrats cool to hearing on warming

The reporter who wrote this seems mystified that the Democrats do not want to exile the skeptical lawmaker for daring to question climate orthodoxy

Kentucky's Democratic leaders are distancing themselves from a legislative hearing on Wednesday held by a Democratic lawmaker who tried to debunk global warming by inviting only skeptics and avoiding scientific testimony. [But Hollywood stars and politicians would have been fine, of course] "I didn't like it very well," House Speaker Jody Richards, D-Bowling Green, said yesterday. "We all do acknowledge -- or a great bulk of us do acknowledge -- global warming and the problems there."

But, despite the grumbling of some rank-and-file lawmakers, Democrats said, they don't plan to remove Rep. Jim Gooch, D-Providence, as chairman of the House Natural Resources and Environment Committee, where he has defended the coal industry and stopped environmental reforms for years. Gooch, 56, and his brother own West Kentucky Steel Construction Co., which sells mining equipment to Peabody Energy, Arch Coal and other coal companies.

Gooch, who consistently wins re-election in his district with about 75 percent of the vote, has taken at least $11,750 in coal-related donations for his modest campaigns since 1998.Environmentalists said Gooch habitually blocks their attempts to limit destruction caused by coal mining, refusing to hear bills that would establish waterway protections or restrict mountaintop removal mining. In fairness, they added, Gooch is only the latest coal-connected chairman chosen and supported by House Democratic leaders to head the environmental committee.The committee's current Democratic vice chairman, Keith Hall of Phelps, also owns a business tied to coal, Benetech Mining Materials.

"Historically, that committee has been chaired by individuals who have strong ties to the coal industry," said Tom FitzGerald, director of the Kentucky Resources Council. "The coal industry prefers to have an ally in charge of that committee, and the House leadership does what it can to appease them."

Yesterday, Gooch denied any suggestion that he favors coal interests over ecological concerns. "I care as much about our environment as anybody," he said. "I'm a tree lover. Not a tree hugger necessarily, but a tree lover."But Gooch said he doubts the existence of global warming, the gradual heating of the Earth's atmosphere at least in part by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases produced by the burning of fossil fuels.

At Wednesday's hearing, Gooch invited rebuttal of global warming theory from two people: a British journalist who said strong solar rays might be the cause rather than carbon dioxide, and a lawyer from a free-market think-tank partially funded by ExxonMobil. Politicians are mistakenly turning away from coal because of fears of "alarmists," Gooch said yesterday. "I just don't believe that scientists -- many of whom were predicting global cooling 30 years ago -- are capable of predicting with their computer models what the weather is going to be like 100 years from now, or whether the oceans are going to rise or whether the ice caps are going to melt," Gooch said.

Some House Democrats said they were shocked and embarrassed to read news stories about Gooch's hearing. Bad enough that he disputes global warming at this late date, they said, but to hold a one-sided hearing without scientists was inexcusable. "It's a good thing the writers are on strike in Hollywood so we don't wind up on the late-night comedy shows again," said Rep. Kathy Stein, D-Lexington, chairwoman of the House Judiciary Committee. "His committee meeting was a laughable farce -- or it would have been, if it wasn't so scary.

"Rep. Jim Wayne, D-Louisville, said he'll urge House Democrats at a retreat later this month to either remove Gooch from his chairman's post or instruct him to handle his position more responsibly. However, Richards and House Democratic Whip Rob Wilkey, D-Scottsville, said there are no such plans. After the General Assembly convenes in January, House Democrats may bring their concerns forward, Wilkey said. "The hearing came out of the blue," Wilkey said. "We were not expecting it and we have not had a chance to discuss it as a caucus.

"Democratic Gov.-elect Steve Beshear and outgoing Kentucky Democratic Party Chairman Jonathan Miller both said they believe in the threat posed by global warming. But they deferred to House leaders on who should run committees. Beshear called Gooch "a friend" and said he looks forward to working with him.It would be highly unusual for the House to dethrone a chairman, said Philip Laemmle, political scientist emeritus at the University of Louisville. Nor is it likely that House leaders worry much about Gooch's insensitivity to the environment, Laemmle said."Until recently in Kentucky, except for activists specifically concerned about it, the environment frankly hasn't been that big of an issue," Laemmle said. "So from a leadership point of view, is it worth it to take this guy on and try to deal with him? My guess is no."

The coal industry, which donates to the state's Democratic and Republican parties, stands by Gooch."He is obviously pro-business -- not just pro-coal, but pro-business," said Bill Caylor, president of the Kentucky Coal Association. "The fact that he is makes him a target not just of environmentalists but also the news media. I think he's been doing a good job overall."

Gooch denied any suggestion that his family's coal-related business unduly affects his legislative actions. If anyone wants to examine conflicts of interest, he said, lawmakers who work in the hotel industry are pushing for casino gambling, and lawmakers who are workers' compensation attorneys have advocated for black-lung disease legislation. "Look, there are lots of cases where legislators have interests," Gooch said. "You can't live in rural Western Kentucky and be in business and not at some time have done some business for some mining or mine-related business. To say because of that that we should somehow disqualify ourselves and not represent our districts is just simply ludicrous."

Source




LIEBERMAN-WARNER GLOBAL WARMING BILL LOSING MOMENTUM

Post below lifted from EPW blog. See the original for links

Widely respected non-partisan Charles River Associates (CRA) issued a November 8 analysis of Lieberman-Warner global warming cap-and-trade bill (S.2191) that reveals it will cost $4-6 trillion dollars in welfare costs over 40 years and up to one trillion per-year by 2050. (LINK)

American Council for Capital Formation's (ACCF) new analysis on November 8 of the Lieberman-Warner bill finds the bill will lead "to higher energy prices, lost jobs and reduced GDP (gross domestic product)." (LINK)

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) "is not endorsing the Warner-Lieberman bill `because it doesn't include the nuclear issue by name,' according to his spokeswoman Melissa Shuffield. `We can't effectively reduce our emissions without including nuclear energy, which is more efficient than the technologies in the bill.' (Source: 10-18-07 Washington Post - LINK)

Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), the co-author of the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade bill, conceded on November 1 that his bill would cost "hundreds of billions of dollars." (LINK)

Democrat Presidential candidate John Edwards has also come out in strong opposition to the Lieberman-Warner bill, calling it "a massive corporate windfall" on November 1. (LINK)

Senator George Voinovich (R-OH) critiqued the Lieberman-Warner bill's proposed new Federal bureaucracy on November 8: "The very mechanisms the bill advances to contain costs seem to be more the stuff of academic theorizing than sound analysis. We have heard from no witnesses on the efficacy of the [proposed federal Carbon Market Efficiency Board] and its ability to protect the economy; veiled allusions to the Federal Reserve Board only remind us of the decades of trial and error endured before that institution regularized its procedures." (LINK)

The AFL-CIO has voiced multiple concerns with Lieberman-Warner, calling the bill "overly aggressive" in a November 5, 2007 letter. (LINK)

U.S. Chamber of Commerce said the Lieberman-Warner bill "does not adequately preserve American jobs and the domestic economy." The letter also stated: "Without participation by developing nations, the carbon constraints imposed by [Lieberman-Warner] would penalize domestic businesses attempting to compete in the world market while non-participating developing nations continue to get a free ride." [Note: Watch U.S. Chamber of Commerce's new TV ad opposing the Lieberman-Warner global warming cap-and-trade bill.

A November 11th Washington Times editorial called Lieberman-Warner: "A misguided environmental-policy bill meandering through the Senate would slap U.S. businesses with pie-in-the-sky requirements for cutting greenhouse gases by unattainable amounts." The Times added: "The bill fails to compensate and protect consumers from rising natural gas prices and harms job security by encouraging companies to move overseas to nations with less draconian standards. In short, the bill's effects would land a crippling encroachment on U.S. power plants, factories and transportation sectors." (LINK)

An October 29th article in Politico details the fading momentum for the Lieberman-Warner bill. The article notes that the "climate bill faces wave of opposition" and is "headed for a bumpy ride" It quotes the National Religious Partnership for the Environment calling Lieberman-Warner "fundamentally flawed." (LINK)

Orange County Register editorial writer Mark Landsbaum wrote on November 6: "Reality is starting to bite to such an extent that even Democrat Presidential candidate John Edwards calls [the Lieberman-Warner] bill what it is, `a massive corporate windfall' for big corporations preparing to game the artificial, government-invented market for profiteering." (LINK)




Science vs. Expert Opinion: Did the Bush Administration Really Censor Science?

Introduction

Once again, the press is in a tizzy over the Bush Administration's "censoring of science." The case against the Bush Administration this time is that it edited testimony presented to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) by Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The testimony, originally 14 pages, was cut to six.

However, the narrative of a scientific cover-up is overwrought to say the least. The hearing was on the potential impact of global warming on human health, an exercise in speculation. It appears, if press accounts are correct, that what the Bush Administration cut from the director's testimony was more speculation than settled science.

When judging scientific statements, one must distinguish between statements of what has happened or is happening and those about what might happen in the future. The first is derived from observation, an important component of the scientific method. The second is derived from expert opinion, a far less reliable source of knowledge, and one only tenuously linked to actual science.

ABC News claimed that Gerberding's pre-edited testimony argued that climate change would lead to "heat waves, cold spells, extreme weather events and weather disasters, air pollution, increased infectious diseases, and increased waterborne and vector-borne infectious diseases."

According to an account of the hearing by Fox News, Senator Barbara Boxer, EPW committee chairman, "produced a CDC chart listing the broad range of health problems that could emerge from a significant temperature increase and sea level rise. They include fatalities from heat stress and heart failure, increased injuries and deaths from severe weather such as hurricanes; more respiratory problems from drought-driven air pollution; an increase in waterborne diseases including cholera, and increases in vector-borne diseases including malaria and hantavirus; and mental health problems such as depression and post-traumatic stress."

When asked about this, Gerberding agreed, "These are potential things you can expect. In some of these areas its not a question of if, it's a question of who, what, how and when."

But what is the basis for these claims? Does the CDC have evidence of a link between past climate change and harm to human health? After all, levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are already three-quarters of the way towards an effective doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations, the benchmark typically used in making global warming predictions. And the global average temperature has risen. If global warming predictions are true, and such a link exists, then the harms mentioned by Senator Boxer should already be evident in the data. However, the data fail to reveal such a link.

In reality, the list of horrors provided by Senator Boxer is little more than speculation based on the opinion of a few experts, not on science. The following sections review the available data on each of the harms mentioned. In each case, the harms to human health with respect to various climate indicators seem to be decreasing.

Much more here

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For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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18 November, 2007

New more complex explanation for 20th century sea-level changes

Throwing all predictions into doubt

The movement of a colossal "mounds" of water in the North Atlantic and Pacific oceans may have caused sea levels to suddenly begin rising more quickly in the 1920s, researchers say. Their analysis presents a more complex picture of sea-level change and suggests that the rate of change has been more dramatic than previously thought.

Data collected using tidal gauges dotted along the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines during the late 19th and 20th centuries suggest that sea levels suddenly began rising more quickly around the 1920s, from about 1 millimetre per year to about 1.8 mm per year. This change has previously been attributed to climate change. However, precisely why oceans suddenly began rising more quickly in the 1920s has remained a mystery.

Warming temperatures boost sea levels in two ways: melting glaciers release more water into the ocean (see What's behind the big polar meltdown?) and seawater expands as it warms. Over the past few decades, sea level measurements taken using satellites show that this trend has continued, with the current rate of increase standing at about 3.36 mm per year.

Now, evidence gathered by Laury Miller of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Bruce Douglas, of the Laboratory for Coastal Research in Florida, US, suggests that this change may be partly explained by the pressure-related movement of gigantic amounts of water. The researchers studied atmospheric pressure records for the late 19th and 20th centuries and used these records to try and work out how rising sea levels may be been affected by shifting ocean peaks, known as "gyres", in the North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. These ocean peaks are produced by water swirling in a circular direction around the ocean as a result of atmospheric pressure, wind and heating. The movement, combined with the turning of the Earth, causes water at the centre of the circle to rise upwards, forming a peak, or gyre. The North Atlantic and Pacific gyres are each about 1 metre taller at the centre than at the edge.

But atmospheric records suggest that the gyres in both oceans sank during the 1920s, releasing water held in the centre and allowing it to flow towards the coasts. This would explain the sudden change in the rate at which sea levels changed at this time, measured by coastal instruments. Since tidal gauges only measure sea-levels along the coasts, they could not have detected the drop in levels towards the oceans' centres.

If the researchers are correct, this means the overall sea levels were in fact rising more slowly at the time. This, in turn, implies that the rise of sea levels accelerated faster over the 20th century than previously thought. However as measurements have only recently become sufficiently accurate, it may take some time before the full picture will be known. "My guess is that it will be 20 or 30 years before we are able to identify how fast sea-level rises are truly accelerating," Miller says.

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BRAVE GREEN WORLD: BRITONS FACE RATIONING, ECONOMIC SLOWDOWN AND JOB LOSSES

Britons face a future of green taxes, higher fuel prices and even flight rationing under anti-pollution laws unveiled yesterday. A Climate Change Bill would make the UK the only country with legally binding targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The five-yearly goals would cost the UK up to 12billion a year for the next 42 years.

The Government was warned that a switch to a low-carbon economy would trigger an economic slowdown and job losses while giving politicians the excuse for unpopular taxes, hike the cost of fuel and even bring in "personal carbon quotas". Critics also point out the move would be pointless if countries such as China, Russia and India refuse to introduce similar targets.

Launching the Bill yesterday, the Government said Britain has a duty to lead by example. It argues that the costs of climate-change related flooding, droughts and illnesses would be far higher if it failed to act.

The Bill does not say how carbon dioxide emissions will be cut. However, it commits the Government to a 60 per cent reduction by 2050. One method could be personal carbon-allowances, where everyone is given a fixed amount of carbon to use each year. Each time they travel in a plane, buy petrol, go shopping or eat out would be recorded on a plastic card. The more frugal could sell spare carbon to those who want to indulge themselves. But if you were to run out of your carbon allowance, you could be barred from flying or driving.

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn said the Bill sets Britain "firmly on the path to the low-carbon economy". He added: "We need to provide the framework that will give a clear idea of how we're going to tackle climate change. "We also need to show that we're taking decisive action within our borders and not asking other countries, in particular poorer countries, to do what we're not willing to do ourselves." Petrol: Would become a 'luxury' under new proposals

According to the food and farming agency Defra, cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent would shrink gross domestic product by 1.6billion to 12billion each year as the UK switches to more expensive renewable energy and energy intensive industries shut. That does not include the costs of building "greener" power stations, creating better public transport or closing polluting factories.

The Bill will set up a new quango - the Committee on Climate Change - which will monitor the Government's progress. It will also introduce a carbon trading scheme for local councils, supermarkets and other big retailers. Kendra Okonski, of the development charity International Policy Network, said: "The UK's emissions are insignificant compared to China and India. We are in danger of cutting off our noses to spite our faces. We will impose costs on our economy which will harm the poor, but do nothing to help the climate."

But Friends of the Earth director Tony Juniper said: "Climate legislation is desperately needed but the Government must strengthen its proposals to make it truly effective."

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Another College Paper Shocker: Global Warming is Killing Us…Not!

Post below lifted from Newsbusters.

The more college newspapers I look at, the more I wonder if Nobel Laureate Al Gore and his global warming sycophants in the press have overplayed their climate alarmism. First there was an editorial in the Harvard Crimson bashing Gore, then a positive article at the Stanford Daily concerning a luncheon address by global warming skeptic S. Fred Singer, followed by a marvelous piece at San Diego State's The Daily Aztec seemingly mocking those that believe we're all going to die because temperatures are rising.

Regardless of the answer, business administration senior Justin Weisbrod cleverly began his article with a tad of misdirection I'd like to think was satirizing the current media hysteria (emphasis added throughout):

The world is ending. In the wake of the San Diego wildfires, many residents of the county may be nodding their heads, as they might already know.

The blazes that torched our county are another sign of the "inconvenient" disaster that's ruining our world, at least according to some.

Environmentalists are begging us to ponder, "What will you do when the water is so polluted you can't drink it and the air is so chock-full of smog you can't step outside?"

Could have been the introduction to any number of hysterical pieces at major newspapers and magazines lately, right? Well, strap yourself in, for he was just kidding:

Before you torch my house (or invite me to a party) for being an Earth-loving hippie, let me make this point: We polluted the crap out of the land, air and sea on planet Earth. But, Earth also pollutes itself. Gasses and elements from volcanoes, fires, storms, meteors and earthquakes all naturally contribute to Earth's warming and cooling processes.

The only thing we did was speed it all up.

As such, global warming is not a problem we can fix. Earth's history is riddled with warm times as well as cold times. And let's remember Earth began from nothing and will end with nothing. We are a grain of sand on a never-ending beach and fully exposed to all the elements. Global warming will not end the existence of planet Earth.

I really like this kid. But there's more:

What does global warming really mean? It means the planet is warming, the ice is melting thus, global warming equals a warmer planet. It's that simple. Guess what comes next? Global cooling. But what if the pollution doesn't allow Earth to do its natural cycles? In the '70s, people thought we were heading into an ice age. What happened in just 30 years?

The weather has its ups and downs, as volatile as the stock market complete with trends, cyclicality, skeptics and believers. Just like the stock market, there is little we can do as individuals to create a dramatic impact.

Sanity from someone so young. What does this tell us? Are these folks not buying into the charade specifically because of their education? Or, are they smelling a rat concerning all the hype that folks many years their senior seem to be either intentionally or incompetently missing? Whatever the answer, it certainly is refreshing to think that not all college kids are buying into the environmentalist nonsense being hawked to them 24/7. Bravo, Justin!




CLIMATE CHANGE NOT BIG ISSUE IN US ELECTIONS SAY EXPERTS

Three American political commentators do not see global warming as one of the defining issues for the upcoming presidential campaign. The next president will probably be chosen on the basis of personality and domestic issues unless there is a new terrorist attack before November 2008.

The three journalists, Rick Burke (NY Times), Carroll Doherty (Pew Research Center) and Jonathan Weisman (Washington Post) were invited to Brussels for a debate organised by the US German Marshall Fund.

None of the three dared to make any predictions as to the outcome of the Presidential race which will start with preliminaries in Iowa in January 2008. The Democrats have the better chances but this is more a result of the frustration with Bush than because of the Democrats’ own merits, according to the US journalists. The names most mentioned during the briefing as potential runners were Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama for the Democrats and Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney for the Republicans, but watch out for Mike Huckabee (Republican), dixit Burke. A double ticket Clinton-Obama would be too much breaking the taboos, agreed all three.

Jonathan Weisman felt that, contrary to the last two campaigns, foreign policy would play less of a role. Health care, energy costs, immigration and tax policies are the issues that matter to the American people this time.

Asked by different speakers from the audience about climate change, the three experts did not see Europe’s hot topic playing a major role in the campaign, although they admitted that all Democrat candidates are trying to present their special climate change plans. Energy security (and oil independence) could be more of an issue, said Weisman, especially if gasoline prices would go to 4 dollars a gallon.

Let me add my two-cents worth: it is clear that even the press experts are quite uncertain about the outcome of the next Presidential elections. They all see that the country is ready for a big change but in what direction and with whom seems to be wide open. I also think they underestimate the energy security issue and, linked to that, the growing anti-globalisation mood in the US. If the US were to go into a recession, energy prices would rise spectacularly and unemployment would start to grow considerably, we might be in for some strange surprises, even an influential independent candidate (Bloomberg?) who might not be the ultimate winner but could surely change the cards in a considerable way. I generally agree with the GMF speakers though that Europeans overestimate the impact climate change will have on the campaign.

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KING COAL STILL GOING STRONG

NO UTILITY with any respect for its shareholders' money, says Michael Morris, the boss of the biggest one in America, AEP, would build a heavily polluting coal-burning power station in America these days, for fear that it would become a liability if the government moved to limit emissions of greenhouse gases. Europe already has a cap on emissions, which is designed precisely to discourage dirty fuels such as coal. So why is it that utilities in both places are running their coal-fired plants at full throttle, have several new ones under construction and would like to build even more?

Using coal to generate electricity produces more greenhouse gases per resulting watt than using oil or natural gas, but coal is cheap. In countries where there are no limits on emissions and where demand for power is growing rapidly, such as India and China, coal is booming. Energy lore has it that in China a new coal-burning plant is fired up every week. What is certain is that China has become a net importer of coal for the first time this year. India's imports have been growing steadily for the past 20 years. The International Energy Agency, an energy watchdog for rich countries, projects that demand for coal will grow by 2.2% a year until 2030—faster than demand for oil or natural gas. Coal-mining firms in Indonesia and Australia, the biggest exporters, are digging as fast as they can but are still struggling to cope with the surge in orders. Freighters are literally queuing up off Newcastle, Australia, the world's busiest coal port.

But poor and fast-growing places are not the only ones with a hunger for coal. In America, more coal-fired generation is being built than at any time in the past seven years, despite the threat of emissions caps, according to the Department of Energy. In Europe, several power companies are building new coal-fired plants, even though every tonne of carbon dioxide that they emit will require an expensive permit. For example, RWE, a German utility, plans to spend €6.2 billion ($9.1 billion) on three new coal-fired plants by 2012. One of them is already under construction.

All this has helped to push the price of coal steadily upwards in the past few years. Nonetheless, it has risen less quickly than that of oil or natural gas. Coal is now by far the cheapest of the common fuels for power stations relative to the amount of heat it generates when burnt (see chart). At the very least that is encouraging utilities to run their existing coal-fired plants flat out. But it is also prompting some to convert oil-fired plants to run on coal instead. Enel, Italy's former electricity monopoly, has already performed one such refurbishment, and has two more under way, at a cost of €3.8 billion. Leonardo Arrighi, who supervises the firm's investments in generation, says it would like to build “more and more” coal-fired plants.

In theory, the carbon price (in Europe) and the threat of one (in America) should dent this enthusiasm for coal. But in practice many utilities are betting that the disparity in fuel prices will outweigh the cost of extra permits to pollute. At the moment such permits cost pennies in Europe, because governments handed out too many of them. Although there should be more of a shortage starting next year, the futures price would have to rise from the current 22 euros per tonne of carbon to over 30 per tonne to prompt a significant switch away from coal over the next two years, according to Henrik Hasselknippe of Point Carbon, a consultancy.

To be fair, many of the coal-fired power stations under construction in Europe and America are very efficient, and so emit less carbon per watt of output than existing plants. RWE and Enel both claim that their new plants will be among the most efficient in Europe. AEP is building a similar plant in America, which will remain profitable at carbon prices of up to $20 a tonne, according to Mr Morris. Meanwhile, many American firms are cancelling or delaying plans to build grubbier coal-fired plants until they have a clearer idea of future carbon prices.

Politicians in both Europe and America talk of carbon prices eventually being so high that coal-fired plants will be viable only if they capture their emissions and store them underground. But no such plants yet exist. Most of those under construction are not even “capture-ready”, as the industry jargon has it, since utilities do not consider the extra expense worthwhile. Even in Europe, with its steadily tightening emissions cap, much higher carbon prices or stricter regulation will be required to get utilities to build capture-ready plants, says John Krenicki, the head of the energy division at General Electric.

In fact, governments are sending out conflicting signals. Germany, for example, is making it easier to build new coal plants by granting them free emissions permits, even though it aims to reduce emissions to 40% below the 1990 level by 2020. Enel hopes to persuade the governments of Bulgaria and Romania to do the same. In America, the most prominent proposals for regulations to reduce emissions all involve generous hand-outs to the coal industry. For a supposedly dying breed, advocates of coal-fired generation still seem to have plenty of clout with Europe's and America's politicians.

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Prolonged cooling in South America

Latin America was rocked this week by a four-word sentence. During a summit in Chile King Juan Carlos of Spain told the president of Venezuela Hugo Chavez to shut up: "Por que no te callas" (Why do you not shut up?). Someone must tell Al Gore the same or invite him to visit this corner of the world. It is a never ending winter here in South America. “What a hell is happening this year with a seven-month winter”, asked a famous TV journalist about the unusual climatic winter of 2007 that began with fury in May and still persist in November. Buenos Aires recorded this Thursday (November 15th) the lowest temperature for the month of November in 90 years. Temperature in the Downtown weather station reached 2.5C. Since records began more than a century ago, only two days had colder lows in November. It was in 1914 (1.6) and 1917 (2.4). And ninety years ago the urban heat island effect was much less pronounced than nowadays, what turns the temperature observed today remarkable.

The much colder than usual weather was not confined to Argentina. This Thursday had near-freezing temperatures and frost in Uruguay. Weather stations recorded 1.5ºC in Trinidad; 1.8ºC in Durazno; 2.4ºC in Tacuarembó; 3ºC in Artigas; 3.2ºC in Melo and Florida; 3.8ºC in Treinta y Tres; 4.1ºC in Paso de los Toros; 4.6ºC in Rivera and 4.8ºC em San José.

In the southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil temperatures fell to 2.3ºC degrees in several towns near the border with Uruguay on Thursday. Wind and cloud cover prevented lower temperatures in the higher altitudes, but earlier in the week several towns in the Sierras region recorded temperatures near zero Celsius and frost. In Sao Joaquim, the low was 1.6 below zero with moderate frost on Monday (November 12th).

Frequent cold air incursions are prompting a very stormy spring in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. More than one hundred towns declared emergency due to severe thunderstorms and tornadoes in recent weeks. One man died. Some towns experienced almost complete destruction twice in just ten days.

Further south, the problem is the excessive ice. The Brazilian Base Comandante Ferraz (file image above) in Antarctica is rationing water. Never in the last twenty years the weather was so cold and snowy this time of the year in the Brazilian post in the South Pole. The nearby lakes that provide water to the base are frozen since September. The heliport that allows the arrival of food and bottled water by air is under three meters of snow. Water for human consumption is limited to the fifty Brazilian researchers in the region and the situations turns more dangerous each day. So, por que no te callas Al Gore ?

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17 November, 2007

GLIKSON & BROOK WRONG ON SEA LEVEL RISE: IT'S SLOWER, NOT FASTER

An email from Timo Hameranta [timohame@yahoo.co.uk] to Benny Peiser

Glikson & Brook (CCNet, 14 November 2007 [See also p. 2 here]) are concerned about sea level rise and refer to IPCC AR4:

"The IPCC 2007 documents a near doubling of sea level rise from 0.18 ~ 0.05 cm/year in 1961-2003 to 0.31ñ0.07 cm/year in 1993-2003"

Actually, IPCC AR4 WGI SPM states:

"Global average sea level rose at an average rate of 1.8 [1.3 to 2.3] mm per year over 1961 to 2003. The rate was faster over 1993 to 2003: about 3.1 [2.4 to 3.8]mm per year. Whether the faster rate for 1993 to 2003 reflects decadal variability or an increase in the longer term trend is unclear."

In any case, this is outdated information. In more precise and up-to-date calculations the alleged faster sea level rise has been shown to be SLOWER, reduced to 1.31 ~ 0.30 mm/yr, please see:

Woppelmann, G., B. Martin Miguez, M.-N. Bouin, and Z. Altamimi, 2007. Geocentric sea-level trend estimates from GPS analyses at relevant tide gauges world-wide. Global and Planetary Change Vol. 57, No 3-4, pp. 396-406, June 2007.




Lindzen says Chill out: Global Warming skeptic speaks at Colgate university, NY

Students and faculty crowded into the Henshaw Lecture Room in Lathrop Hall on Thursday afternoon to hear a controversial lecture by Massachusetts Institute of Technology Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology Richard Lindzen. Colgate Professor of Political Science, Presidential Scholar and Director of the Center for Freedom and Western Civilization Robert Kraynak, who introduced Lindzen, explained that the original title of the lecture had been "Global Warming: Science and Moral Responsibility" but that he and Lindzen had come up with a better one: "Global Warming: Who's to Blame, Human Activities or Natural Causes?"

Lindzen is one of the most noted and prolific detractors from what Kraynak described as the "popular wisdom of global warming." Lindzen began by saying that he had "always assumed that talking about the weather was a source of boredom." He then began to explain his real concern that too much alarmism surrounds the topic of global climate change. His first goal: to debunk Al Gore.

He recalled that all schools in the United Kingdom had recently been required to show Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth. He noted that a judge ruled that all presentations of the movie be accompanied by a presentation of critiques and explanations of some of the movie's scientific exaggerations. Lindzen cited one of Gore's statements in that film that a melting of the icecaps at either Greenland or West Antarctica would result in a sea level rise of 20 feet "in the near future." The judge, according to Lindzen, said, "this remark was distinctly alarmist" and that Gore's predicted result would take millennia to come about. Lindzen called Gore's statement that "warming is real and caused by humans," a "masterful example of creative ambiguity." "The points of agreement [on warming] have no discernable connection to the alarm," Lindzen said. "If it turns out that we don't have warming or that it is not due to man, that has implications that the association of alarm with greenhouse gas emissions is baseless."

His next point questioned both the derivation and meaning of the popular model of the "hockey stick" graph of weather change, which shows a dramatic increase in temperature rise in recent history. "Even if you call that [rise] unprecedented, it is still too small to suggest alarm," Lindzen said.

After bringing up the scientific inaccuracies in inferences Gore drew from a different graph in his book, Lindzen moved to a different argument against the catastrophic consequences that some predict will come as a result of global warming. "Any prediction of catastrophe is extremely unlikely," Lindzen said. He cited the panic in the 1970s over the prediction of catastrophic American famine in the 1980s, which turned out to be false, as well as the infamous prediction of the Y2K disaster. "These predictions of catastrophe come up episodically and they are always wrong because they have wrong linkages," Lindzen said.

He then projected a model of the linkages leading from cause -- carbon dioxide emissions -- to effect -- disastrous warming effects -- in global warming and noted that the likelihood of each affecting the next was tiny, and that, in the end, the probability of any major effect of global warming was "astronomically small."

Lindzen also brought up how the media has manipulated scientific fact and consensus to promote global warming. He then went into a very scientific debunking of the sensitivity of climate to greenhouse gases, concluding that, "from a religious point-of-view, the Earth is well-designed." He compared the attribution of global warming to greenhouse gases to the intelligent design theory. "We can't think of anything else, so there must be an intelligent designer," he said.

"There is nothing happening in nature that suggests anything urgent," Lindzen said. He then described all of the agendas of people who would be harmed "if you suddenly heard that there was no such thing as harmful global warming," including the Nobel Prize Committee, which recently gave the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore, the environmental movement and science, alternative energy, the United Nations, trial lawyers "looking to make carbon the next tobacco" and individuals who have adopted this issue as a personal cause. "The alarmist dogmas of the past 20 years are almost certainly false or misleading," Lindzen said in conclusion.

A panel of three Colgate professors, Professor of Geography Adam Burnett, Assistant Professor of Chemistry Ephraim Woods and Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies Bob Turner were then allowed to ask Lindzen questions, followed by a question-and-answer session for students. "I think it's good to have folks on campus that have a strong point of view," Woods said. "But [Lindzen] doesn't engage in a discussion very well. He is very quick to reject some pieces of data as bad science or somehow contrived when they don't meet with his point of view."

"I thought that he made a very compelling argument," first-year Mike Abrahamson, who attended the lecture on suggestion from a professor, said. "I would say as someone who knows very little about the science on either side that it was very convincing." "It's nice that we now have viewpoints from both extreme sides of the issue," first-year Alyssa Perez said, referring to the lecture and to The Weather Makers, the required reading for incoming first-years. "Now I'd like to hear from someone more in the middle of the issue." "I think this lecture helped a lot,"

Director of Summer Programs and Lecturer in University Studies Matt Leone, who suggested the lecture to his students, including Abrahamson and Perez, said. "Lindzen is an extraordinarily adept meteorologist. He is clearly very knowledgeable and passionate about his subject...This is the kind of thing that matters a lot.I can't be convinced one way or another because I'm not a scientist, but I do feel as a citizen that I should do my best to understand the subject as best I can."

Source




Gore's Deceptive Rolling Stone Interview

Post below lifted from American Thinker. See the original for links

In case any doubt remains as to who deserves the title of undisputed Globaloney Champion of the World, Al Gore's Rolling Stone interview should put the question to rest. Interviewed in the magazine's third 40th Anniversary Issue of the year, self-proclaimed planet savior Al Gore warns that:

"It is a mistake to think of the Climate Crisis as one in a list of issues that will define our future. It is the issue. Everything else must be viewed through that lens."

That's right -- The issue. Not the all too real, ongoing struggle against radical Islamic madmen. Not nuclear proliferation. Not even the truly apocalyptic potential fusion of the two, a prospect which recent events in Pakistan have chillingly served to advance. No - the issue, insists Gore, is his completely conjectural Climate Crisis. As though to support such an absurd declaration, he then offered these keen observations:

"The north polar ice cap is melting, the fires are burning, the sea level is rising, living species are going extinct. These and many other manifestations, including half the U.S. being in drought last year, are visible to the naked eye. We have got to recognize that even though it's never happened before, it is happening right now."

Now, virtually every claim in his first two sentences is technically truthful. Until, that is, augmented by the catastrophe-implying qualification of the third. And it is just that dishonest inference -- that these occurrences are without precedent -- that exposes the true measure of this man in oh so many ways. So, with apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, let me count the ways.

Yes, the northern polar ice cap is melting. For the most part, it's been alternately retreating and advancing in reaction to seasonal changes for as long as there have existed seasons. And, while it's true that its dimensions may now be at a record low, Gore somehow failed to mention that the southern polar ice cap recently reached ice levels higher than we've encountered in 30 years. If global warming is alleged, you have to look at the Southern Hemisphere too when talking about polar ice caps. Nothing new here -- 1 down.

Next up -- fires are burning? Might the Goreacle be alluding to the recent arson, environmental-case-backlash- and Santa Ana wind-induced southern California blazes? Nice try, but wildfires have raged there for hundreds of years. Even the true believers at the LA Times reported that "global warming was not a factor" in the infernos, citing a Science journal study which found that the region suffered "no increase in the frequency of fire as temperatures rose." Strike 2.

But sea levels are rising, cautions Gore. And that's quite accurate, although not by measures even remotely approaching the map-redrawing 20 feet by the year 2100 he repeatedly portends. Indeed, even his overly hysterical co-awardees at the IPCC have projected a far less catastrophic global mean sea level rise of between 0.09 and 0.88 meters from 1990 to 2100. And once again, it has happened before -- oceans have been ascending at varying rates since the end of the last ice age -- over 10,000 years ago. That's 0 for 3.

And, what of these alleged extinctions? Are "living species" truly "going extinct," as Al maintains? Of course they are, just as they have throughout history. The cold truth is that The World Conservation Union lists 698 animal species extinctions since 1500 A.D. And, at Peter Maas's Extinction site, he lists 62 extinctions in the 19th century and 86 in the 20th which he attributes primarily to invasive alien species, habitat loss and overexploitation. Implying that this unfortunate yet essential component of natural selection is somehow unprecedented is nothing short of imbecilic. Surely Gore believes in evolution, of which natural selection is the driving force.

Four deeply deceptive assertions in a single sentence certainly do nothing to smooth Gore's reputation for exaggerating. But implying in the very next breath that last year's drought was an unparalleled prognosticator of doom verges on incitement to panic. According to the National Climatic Data Center's U.S. National Percent Area Moderately to Extremely Dry and Moderately to Extremely Wet chart, nascent dryness is far from unprecedented. True - 2000, 2002, and 2006 each had at least one month with over 50% of the country experiencing drought conditions. But the same can be said of 1977, 1981, and 1988. And beginning in 1954 there were 4 such consecutive drought years.

Furthermore, the 1930's were a truly devastating period, enveloped in what the NCDC declares the "most widespread national drought in the last 300 years." For 5 of those years, over 50% of the country was hit, and for 5 months during 1934 that figure climbed to almost 80%. The misery these conditions brought to the Great Plains region -- parched for virtually the entire decade -- made refugees of large numbers of Americans, as chronicled in the classic American tale of dispossessed dust bowl migrants, The Grapes of Wrath.

Ironically, getting reacquainted with Steinbeck's patently pro-socialist masterpiece might afford the alarmist-in-chief a valuable perspective on demagoguery. Casy the Preacher man vowed never to sermonize again until he learned the truth himself: "Preachers gotta know [what they're preaching about]," he confided to Tom Joad, confessing that he did not.

Not a single one of Gore's five examples of what's "happening right now" has, as he persists, "never happened before." Not one. So in how many ways does Gore deceive? Given five deceptions in three sentences in one paragraph in just one interview, who can possibly keep count?




U.S DEMOCRATS AGREE TO SLOW DOWN GLOBAL WARMING LEGISLATION

Sen. Barbara Boxer agreed on Tuesday to take more time to work through complex global warming legislation amid concerns over the possible economic impact of mandating sharp cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. At a hearing of the Environment Committee, which Boxer chairs, the California Democrat said she will not try to push through a vote on a bill, as she had once planned, before a major United Nations climate change conference begins in Indonesia on Dec. 3. She still hopes to attend that two-week session in Bali, which may set an international framework for carbon reductions.

Republicans had derided the "Bali or bust" fast-track timetable and promised dozens of amendments to the bill, sponsored by Sens. Joe Lieberman and John Warner, which would establish a cap-and-trade program affecting all industries that emit greenhouse gases, from cement to autos. The goal of the bill is to use mandatory limits on emissions and marketplace forces to encourage cleaner technology, efficiency and conservation. Industries would receive carbon emissions credits, and those that stay under the caps could trade or sell them.

"We'll work on this as long as it takes," Boxer said during the hearing. After the session, she said she wants the committee to work through the massive, 200-plus-page bill on Dec. 5 and 6, "even if it takes all night," and then vote on the legislation. She promised Republicans on the committee to consider all amendments "in an open and transparent process." If the committee passes the bill, the full Senate would probably not take it up until February, Boxer said, right in the middle of presidential primary season. "The issue of global warming is rapidly barreling at us," Boxer said after the hearing, "and we can't let this slip to the next administration or the next generation."

But Tuesday's hearing showed how much work remains, and how many obstacles may block passage. Environmental groups worry that too many carbon credits would be given away to heavy polluters, and want more credits to be auctioned, with the proceeds paying for clean technology and helping low-income consumers.

Some utilities, industries and unions said the bill may be setting policy goals ahead of technology and that businesses relying on cheap coal would see their costs jump because of requirements to capture and store carbon dioxide from coal-fired plants. "This bill will encourage fuel switching from coal to natural gas, further escalating natural gas prices," said Andrew Sharkey, chief executive of the American Iron and Steel Institute. He predicted that even more U.S. manufacturing could move to countries that did not have stringent carbon controls.

The complexity of a cap-and-trade system - affecting almost every sector of the economy - "may very well result in the most far-reaching re-engineering of modern society ever attempted by Congress," added Donald Rowlett, an official with OGE Energy, an Oklahoma utility. Republican senators such as George Voinovich of Ohio said that electricity prices could jump 38 to 45 percent under the bill's restrictions, based on analysis by the Energy Information Administration. "This bill is not ready for prime time, even if the advertising for it has been top of the line," complained Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, who told Boxer he planned to offer 25 to 30 amendments.

The bill has an important political advantage in its sponsors. Warner, a Virginia Republican, has the respect of GOP senators and Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, has been working on the issue for years. Lieberman warned that "the economic cost of doing nothing on global warming will be grievous," and that sacrifices now will be less onerous than in the future. Further briefings and hearings will be held today and Thursday on the economic impacts of the bill.

Some Republicans suggested that the committee shape the bill in a way to attract the eventual support of 60 senators, the threshold needed for passage. But Boxer said her immediate goal is simpler: "My job is to get a good bill as far as I can get it, and that's out of committee."

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Aren't we lucky to have Greenie wisdom to guide us?

They don't even know how to grow trees! An amusing story of gross design incompetence from Australia

Trees are mysteriously dying in front of the new Brisbane City Council executive tower -- hailed as one of Australia's most environmentally sustainable buildings. Six of the native subtropical waterhousea floribunda trees planted at the precinct this year are dead and about 15 others are in visible distress. The Brisbane Square is the largest high-rise office building in Australia to receive a five-star green rating from the Green Building Council of Australia and has been praised by Brisbane City Council for its green credentials. But Reddacliff Place at Brisbane Square, intended to be one of Brisbane's most beautiful and tree-shrouded public spaces, may have to be torn up for remedial work to solve the tree problem.

An investigation by arborist Peter Bishop has found possible problems with drainage design. "The pits for the trees have gravel in the bottom of them and the drainage line is above that," Mr Bishop said. "In effect, you've got a bath tub where the plug is up the side of the tub. The water sits in the bottom of these pits and turns stagnant because it can't get away." Mr Bishop believes the pits need to be re-engineered.

The mature trees are worth $2000 each to replace, while any work to solve the drainage problem is likely to run into six figures.. Brisbane City Council declined to comment on why the trees were dying. A spokeswoman said it did not own the building or the square and only leased space there.

Mr Bishop said the live trees should be removed immediately if they were to be saved. "The drainage issues need to be rectified and new trees will need to be planted and fixed in such a fashion that they can withstand the wind loads that are placed upon them," he said. He predicted if nothing was done, every tree in the square would be dead within a year.

Brisbane City Council has claimed credit for demanding environmentally friendly principles be used in the development, which also houses the Brisbane City Library and Suncorp offices. Some of the features that enabled the $198 million highrise to achieve its five-star green rating include using materials such as goat hair, wool, cotton and hemp in parts of the construction. The building's water-saving features include using river water in airconditioning, on-site rainwater tanks and a sewerage treatment plant.

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For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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16 November, 2007

SOLAR CYCLE 24 PREDICTIONS: COOLING COMING?

By James Marusek [tunga@custom.net]

Each morning I turn on my computer and check to see how the sun is doing. Lately I am greeted with the message "The sun is blank - no sunspots." We are at the verge of the next sunspot cycle, solar cycle 24. How intense will this cycle be? Why is this question important? Because the sun is a major force controlling natural climate change on Earth.

Our Milky Way galaxy is awash with cosmic rays. These are high speed charged particles that originate from exploding stars. Because they are charged, their travel is strongly influenced by magnetic fields. Our sun produces a magnetic field that extends to the edges of our solar system. This field deflects many of the cosmic rays away from Earth. But w