AMAZING: THE HOUSE OF LORDS HAS JUST RUBBISHED BRITAIN'S CLIMATE CHANGE POLICIES

The House of Lords has always been known as a reservoir of expertise on many subjects and Tony Blair's reforms have (perhaps ironically) enhanced its authority. So the latest report of a Lords expert committee will carry enormous weight in Britain. And we know from the hunting ban that getting legislation past an unwilling House of Lords is still an enormous political obstacle too. Basically, the new report endorses the approach of one George W. Bush! The Lords report certainly blows the "consensus" myth out of the water if it does nothing else. There has been such a big movement towards realism about climate change recently that I suspect that we have just passed a tipping point. The following summary is from The Scotsman of 6th. July.

* Lords report finds Kyoto targets will make little change to global warming
* Report echoes US criticisms of ecological treaty's economic damage
* White House chairman predicts compromise on climate issues at start of G8

Key quote:
"The Kyoto Protocol makes little difference to rates of global warming and has a naive compliance mechanism, which can only deter countries from signing up to subsequent tighter emissions targets"

Story in full:
The Kyoto Protocol has been rubbished by a heavyweight committee of peers, on the day that Tony Blair opens the G8 summit with a focus on global warming. A cross-party House of Lords report today finds that the Kyoto targets will make "little difference" to the pace of global warming and has called for Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, to calculate how much it is costing Britain. The report will deal a damaging blow both to Mr Blair's attempt to present a "consensus" behind global warming, and demands that the United States agrees to Kyoto in a G8 declaration tomorrow.

In a report seemingly timed to have maximum impact on the G8, which is due to release its climate change communique tomorrow, the peers said that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations-backed environmental watchdog, is tainted by "political interference".

Policymakers were too focused on mitigating climate change, rather than adapting to it, they said.

Lord Lawson, a former chancellor and committee member, was critical of the way that Kyoto targets for greenhouse gas emissions had been "subcontracted" to the IPCC, which he described as "very, very flawed". An issue so central to Britain's economy should be decided by the government, he said. "I can tell you that I was astonished when the Treasury witness said that the Treasury really wasn't involved in any serious way in this at all," he said. "When I was chancellor, it would have been unthinkable on a matter as important as economic affairs - important in public expenditure terms - that the Treasury was not making a very thorough analysis of the issue."

The committee expressed sympathy with the United States, whose Senate voted unanimously against any climate-change treaty that could damage the economy without imposing conditions on developing countries. Instead of trying to coerce the US president, George Bush, into signing up to the Kyoto Protocol, the UK should abandon the treaty and explore alternatives based on agreements over carbon-free technology. "We are concerned that the international negotiations on climate-change reduction will be ineffective because of the preoccupation with setting emissions targets," the report said. "The Kyoto Protocol makes little difference to rates of global warming and has a naive compliance mechanism, which can only deter countries from signing up to subsequent tighter emissions targets."

Since the Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997, scientists have established that it would simply mean global temperature rising by 2.35øC rather than 2.5øC by 2100.

The House of Lords called for a carbon tax to replace the climate-change levy, while warning that policies such as saving energy and renewables were based on "dubious assumptions".

The report was angrily attacked by environmental campaigners yesterday. Duncan McLaren, the chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, said there was no obsession with targets. "The idea that we will make progress on tackling climate change without having some sort of targets is ludicrous. Without targets, there is no incentive."

Meanwhile, Mr Bush has come a long way towards agreeing with campaigners on some of the basic issues. He said in an ITV interview on Monday that the planet is warming and "obviously" man is partly responsible. He is likely to repeat this in a G8 declaration tomorrow, in what may be described by UK ministers as a significant concession. But in Washington, aides have rounded on the European consensus on Kyoto. The president's top environmental adviser yesterday attacked European countries for their "narrow" view of global warming. Jim Connaughton, the chairman of the White House, predicted that the G8 summit starting today in Gleneagles will end without narrowing the gap between the US and Europe over climate change and the Kyoto Protocol, to cut emissions.

Pre-summit talks to prepare the ground for a final declaration are heading towards division, the adviser said. "There's a reflection of the fact that a number of the countries are proceeding with Kyoto and some other countries are pursuing their own strategy," Mr Connaughton told US journalists before the president took off for Scotland.

Climate change and its causes is a contentious issue, dividing nations and scientists. One puzzling anomaly is the Franz Josef glacier in New Zealand, which has been growing, rather than receding, at a rate of 12ft a day, apparently bucking the expectations that glaciers would recede in a warmer environment.

The British government has argued that there is a clear consensus, which the US must accept. But the implementation of Kyoto four months ago has revived the debate, showing that the facts remain in dispute.

The G8 will discuss climate change tomorrow. The draft communique, which has been widely leaked, simply restates the general principles - and speaks of the need to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Ministers are hoping that the US will agree to an ongoing dialogue with India and China, who in 1997 were considered too poor to sign Kyoto. There will also be agreement on the importance of new fuel technologies.




INDIA SIDES WITH THE USA

As the world seeks to address the threat of climate change, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will make a strong pitch for nuclear energy as an alternative to fossil fuels at the summit of the eight industrial democracies this week at Gleneagles, Scotland. Along with the top leaders of China, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa, Singh will be joining the leaders of G-8 in Scotland to discuss practical ways to deal with the challenge of global warming.

Amidst the intense trans-Atlantic squabble over global warming, there is an interesting congruence of views between India and the developing countries on the one side and the US on the other. While the Europeans emphasise on regulations and quotas for the worldwide reduction of carbon-dioxide emissions, the Bush Administration's focus is on development of new options like nuclear power, clean coal technology and the use of hydrogen fuel for the transportation sector.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair is desperately trying to bridge the divide and put together a new global consensus to address the threat posed by the burning of fossil fuels that emit carbon dioxide and raise global temperatures. The earlier consensus on reducing carbon emissions, the Kyoto Protocol, has been rejected by the Bush Administration.

Singh will insist that the principal responsibility for the reduction of global emissions of carbon dioxide rests with the advanced countries. The G-8 countries-the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan and Russia-account for 65 per cent of global GDP and 47 per cent of world's carbon emissions. While underlining the importance of "common but differentiated responsibility" between the developed and developing countries, Singh would argue that answers to global warming must not come in the way of economic development. Nor should the regimes of global warming restrict the use of energy use by developing countries.

This was the point President Bush was making last week when he quoted former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to say poverty and underdevelopment were the greatest sources of pollution. The practical way to go beyond the Kyoto Protocol, India recognises, lies in deploying new energy technologies that will help both developed and developing nations to reduce carbon emissions.

The renewed worldwide interest in nuclear energy comes at a time when Delhi has stepped up its diplomatic campaign to remove the current international restrictions against atomic energy cooperation with India. As Singh presses India's case of nuclear energy development, President Bush has been promoting nuclear energy at home and has talked of sharing it with fast growing economies like India.

Even the powerful environmental movements around the world, once sworn enemies of nuclear power, are beginning to have second thoughts. The G-8 summit is expected to broadly endorse greater use of nuclear power. That sentiment, however, will not be enough for India. It needs a change of current rules to allow civilian nuclear cooperation with India. This issue will figure prominently in the meeting between Singh and Bush at the White House on July 18.

From NewIndpress, 5 July 2005





KYOTO PROTOCOL TO DESTROY RUSSIAN ECONOMY WITH UNNECESSARY PAYMENTS

From "Pravda", 5 July 2005

The G8 summit is set to take place in Europe this week. The global climate change on the whole and the Kyoto Protocol in particular, are expected to become one of the central subjects of the international discussion. US President George W. Bush used the occasion to crack down on the ideologists of Kyoto agreements. Russian scientists prepare their own scandal too: they want Russia to withdraw its signature from the British report on the global warming.

Russia approved the Kyoto Protocol in September of 2004, whereas the administration of the US president is rigidly determined not to participate in such a doubtful venture. George W. Bush stated on the threshold of the G8 summit that the US administration viewed the Kyoto Protocol as a form of international fraud. Bush strongly excluded an opportunity for the USA to ratify a treaty, the essence of which would be similar to the Kyoto climate change treaty. The US economy would be ruined, if the USA met the conditions of the climate change document, Bush clarified.

It is worth mentioning that the USA joined the protocol in 1997, although it later pulled out from the treaty four years later, when American experts analyzed all advantages and disadvantages of the decision. According to the standpoint of the US administration, one should not restrict the economic development and assign huge funds for the struggle with carbonic gas in poor states. One should deal with such problems independently, investing in energy-saving and ecologically pure technologies, Bush believes.

It is hard to accuse the USA of greediness and unwillingness to acknowledge ecological problems. The Bush's administration launches new projects of nuclear and alternative energy, to gradually reduce the share of hydrocarbon-powered thermal power stations in the future. Pragmatic Americans kill two birds with one stone: they reduce the amount of harmful emissions in the atmosphere and strengthen their energy security from politically unstable fuel exporters. One has to acknowledge the fact that the USA does not need any external pressure at this point: whether it comes from the Kyoto Protocol or another similar agreement.

The dynamically growing India and China do not need it either. Russia apparently needs the protocol despite its ambition to double the GDP. The treaty stipulates Russia and former republics of the Soviet Union should cut the emission of greenhouse gases by over 30 percent during the forthcoming years and by 90 percent by 2050. It means that the economic activity on the territory of the Russian Federation is supposed to drop by 70-80 percent, whereas the GDP growth for Russia and former Soviet states must reduce two or three times by 2050. To crown it all, global warming restraining programs are evaluated at up to 47 trillion dollars.

Russia already suffers losses from the ratification of the climate change treaty. The idea, which permeates through the Kyoto Protocol, is connected with the myth of the global warming. However, Russia's congresses, addresses and most prominent scientists were trying to prove to the world that the actual reasons of the global climate change were still unknown. Russian specialists repeatedly said that the problem needed to be developed and studied further. It is noteworthy that Russian scientists were not allowed to participate in international discussions on the matter.

They are not going to give up fighting, though: a delegation of Russia specialists reportedly prepares a scandal for the G8 summit. Russian scientists disliked the fact that the British report about the global response to the climate change issue (the report will be presented at the G8 summit in Scotland) was signed by the president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Yury Osipov (in addition to eleven signatures made by foreign academicians). The chairman of the climate change and Kyoto Protocol council of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Yury Israel, said that the collective discussion of the document prepared by British specialists started only [last week]. As a result, members of the council asked Yury Osipov to withdraw his signature from the report. "Russian academicians have not changed their stance regarding the Kyoto Protocol," Israel said at yesterday's press conference. Russian scientists still consider the Kyoto Protocol scientifically ungrounded and inefficient in terms of achieving the goal of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

In addition, specialists are certain that the Kyoto Protocol is harmful to the Russian economy. It is an open secret that the ice of the Antarctic acts as an indicator of the global climate change. Kyoto Protocol champions persistently emphasize the threat of the Antarctic thawing. A group of Russian scientists, who have recently returned from their mission to Antarctica, presented a sensational report to the Academy of Sciences. Having conducted a series of meticulous experiments on board the Krasin ice breaker, the scientists concluded that the biggest part of the Antarctic continent had become colder with time. Yury Israel said that the recent mission could only prove that there were too many uncertainties left in climate change forecasts. The phenomenon itself is obvious, although modern science does not have a definite explanation to it yet. Trillions of dollars seem to be a huge sacrifice at this point: the USA, China and India are aware of it.





NEW EVIDENCE THAT GEOMAGNETIC FACTORS MAY PLAY MAJOR ROLE IN CLIMATE CHANGE

Abstract and Discussion from an academic paper in "Earth and Planetary Science Letters". Article in Press, Corrected Proof here. The article points to another apparently strong NATURAL influence on climate change that does not figure in the usual Greenie "models" -- variations in earth's magnetism. Doi address for the paper: here

Does Earth's magnetic field secular variation control centennial climate change?

By: Yves Gallet a), Agnes Genevey b) and Frederic Fluteau a), c) a) Laboratoire de Paleomagnetisme, UMR CNRS 7577, Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, 4 Place Jussieu, 75252 Paris cedex 05, France b) Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musees de France, UMR CNRS 171, Palais du Louvre-Porte des lions, 14 quai Francois Mitterrand, 75001 Paris, France c) UFR des Sciences Physiques de la Terre, Universite Denis Diderot Paris 7, 2 Place Jussieu, 75251 Paris cedex 05, France

Abstract

We obtained new archeointensity data from French faience potsherds dated from the 17th to 19th century. These results further document the occurrence of sharp changes in geomagnetic field secular variation in Western Europe over the past three millennia. The intensity variation curve shows several maxima whose rising parts appear to coincide in time with the occurrence of cooling events documented in this region from natural and historical data. This coincidence suggests a causal link between enhanced secular variation of the geomagnetic field and climate change over centennial time scales, challenging the role of solar forcing as the sole factor provoking these climatic variations. We propose that the archeomagnetic jerks described by Gallet et al. [1] [Y. Gallet, A. Genevey, V. Courtillot, On the possible occurrence of archeomagnetic jerks in the geomagnetic field over the past three millennia, Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 214 (2003) 237-242.] may engage the mechanism for centennial climate change....

Discussion

Should the temporal concordance underlined above not be fortuitous, we may propose a connection between the geomagnetic field and climate change over centennial time scales. The apparent relationship between rapid intensity increases and the occurrence of cooling periods, while the subsequent decreases in intensity might correspond to the return toward warmer conditions, suggests that enhanced secular variation of the geomagnetic field may have had a significant influence on the climatic variations observed in Western Europe during the past millennia. The main problem is to identify a plausible mechanism which could efficiently link geomagnetic field and climate. This also raises the question of the origin of archeomagnetic jerks. Do they correspond to periods of rapid dipolar field variations? Could the axial dipole field contribute less to geomagnetic field during these periods? Genevey et al. [27] and Gallet et al. [1] noticed that geomagnetic field intensity variations were largely consistent over a large geographical area, at least from Western and Northern Europe to Central Asia [15], during the past millennia. This suggests that the intensity variation curve is strongly dominated by the lower-degree (dipolar?) geomagnetic terms. Several sedimentary and archeomagnetic records also show strong and sudden departures from axial dipolar directions around the 8th century BC, called the "Sterno-Etrussia" geomagnetic excursion by Raspopov et al. [29] (see also [30]), at the time of our older detected archeomagnetic jerk [1].

The fact that the same magnetic signature is observed for all archeomagnetic jerks detected so far in Western Europe pleads in favour of a common cause. If archeomagnetic jerks are global features, they may correspond to short periods of strong equatorial dipole field moment (i.e. of strongly inclined dipole) that would have been repeatedly directed, at least during the past three millennia, toward the Western Eurasian hemisphere. If not global, they may be caused by a sporadic (high-field) non-dipole structure located in the core below the Western European region. The axial dipolar nature of the geomagnetic field likely contributes to a persistent global geometry of magnetospheric and ionospheric currents produced by the interactions between solar activity, galactic cosmic ray flux and the geomagnetic field which protects Earth from charged particles. The flux of these particles breaking through the magnetic shield and penetrating the atmosphere may play an important role in the Earth's atmospheric dynamics, such as variations in cloud and aerosol production and cloudiness radiative properties which control the Earth's radiation budget, and consequently on climate (e.g. [9], [10], [31], [32] and [33]).

A first hypothesis would be that the smaller the geomagnetic dipole moment, the larger the flux of particles penetrating the atmosphere and the cloud production, resulting in cooler conditions. Dergachev et al. [10] have proposed to associate in this way the Netherlands cooling event with a significant decrease in geomagnetic field intensity. However archeomagnetic data fail to reveal an intensity minimum during the first three to four centuries of the first millennium BC; in contrast, this period probably exhibited the largest geomagnetic field intensity of the entire Holocene [27].

Another hypothesis is to assume that the incoming charged particles are deflected toward the poles, where the overall low-humidity level due to cold temperatures limits cloud formation. If archeomagnetic jerks indeed correspond to periods of strongly inclined dipole, then the charged particles would interact with more humid air from lower-latitude environments, leading to significantly larger cloud production and cooling [10]. Although tentative, this mechanism might be more efficient than the one induced by the variations of the axial dipole moment, which otherwise may contribute to longer-term (millennial-scale) climatic variations [9]; the data from Fig. 2 do not support a simple relationship between geomagnetic field strength (again assuming that the archeointensity record from Western Europe does reflect global, dipolar variations) and centennial climate change.

Note that if archeomagnetic jerks are due to sporadic strong non-dipole anomalies, their climatic impact might be more regional. Additional well-dated archeomagnetic data are clearly needed to substantiate whether most centennial climate variations observed during the past millennia have been driven by the secular variation of the geomagnetic field. It would be particularly fascinating to imagine that the history of human civilisations, which strongly depended on climatic fluctuations, could have been influenced by the geomagnetic field generated in the deep Earth. We therefore think that the following hypotheses merit further consideration and testing: i) Centennial climatic changes could be triggered by enhanced secular variation, in particular by archeomagnetic jerks. As a consequence, the role of solar forcing in explaining these climatic variations should be reconsidered; ii) The geomagnetic field could have a smaller axial dipole component during archeomagnetic jerks, which could be responsible for centennial climate change.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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