Is global warming a methodological artifact? An email below from Australian climate scientist, Warwick Hughes:
"Last month I started a "20th Anniversary Review" of the Jones et al 1986 papers that gave us IPCC global warming trends so frequently published. See here. It is strange that considering the obvious flaws in the Jones et al methodology there were no Comments in the original journal.
In 1988 Dr Fred Wood a Congressional researcher published a critique of the Jones et al 1986 papers in the Elsevier journal Climatic Change and Wigley & Jones replied saying that Wood was in error on 9 points. I post both papers and analyse the W & J replies point by point here.
Some of the W & J replies are bizarre and I can not see that it is Wood who was in error. In the 1986 Jones et al Southern Hemisphere paper Jones et al 1986 make the amazing statement that, "... very few stations in our final data set come from large cities." Readers should look over; this, where I list Jones et al SH stations sorted by population. Note the population figures are added by me using mainly GHCN data.
Incidentally, the people at climateaudit.org have picked up on my work and there is a post here that has over 70 comments now. Greenie Watch gets an irate mention in comment 5. Comment 74 made some good points about urban heat-island effects".
Warwick's rather stunning chart above shows what happens when you use temperature records from stations that are remote from urban heat-island effects.
The irate mention of this blog that Warwick refers to is a typical example of the Leftist "argument by abuse" method. No attempt is made to rebut anything said in the abused sources. Ad hominem condemnation alone is all the writer can manage by way of an argument. I am pleased to say that subsequent commenters pointed that out.
ARE WE REALLY SO BAD?
An email from Michael Martin-Smith (lagrangia@lagrangia.karoo.co.uk) to Benny Peiser:
Despite all the talk of doom and gloom, our human civilisation has, in the past decade, seen the Solar System expand threefold, the discovery of a whole new class of " planetary" object out in the Kuiper Belt, the discovery of 150+ extrasolar planets, the increasingly accurate data from space satellites on the very origins of our Universe, and the widening scope of astrobiological inquiry to Mars, Europa and, perhaps, even Titan and Enceladus. This New Age of Discovery seems set to dwarf even that of Copernican and Elizabethan times .
If our global civilisation is guilty of any crime it is a failure to build adequately on the Apollo achievements. Had we built strategically upon that legacy we could now have had clean solar power satellites and moon/asteroid based industrial expansion. As it is , with a little resolution, we could yet achieve the same over the coming generation or two. We have nothing to lose and a whole lot to gain by going for it. If the pessimists are right, we can say with Olaf Stapledon that "It is a fine thing to have been Man" and given it our best shot. If not ,and our faith is justified - we have a Universe to win.
Failing that, this century will surely see China, with or without India, take up the baton if relinquished by a self-doubting West. We live in interesting times, maybe - but a failure of civilisation and the end of human progress leading to a New Stone Age? I doubt it. We should foster the Highest Common Factor, not the Lowest Common Denominator in Humanity. Life - and Evolution - are games in which those who do not strive to win deserve to lose!
THE ELITE ORIGINS OF THE MODERN GREEN/LEFT
Indeed, most of the emerging leaders of the anti-capitalist movement seemed to be surprisingly well-heeled. Mark Brown (Radley School), heir to the Vestey fortune was acquitted of leading the Carnival Against Capitalism of June 1999; Lord Peter Melchett (Eton), former cabinet minister and grandson to Imperial Chemicals Industry's Lord Alfred Mond, was head of Greenpeace UK, as well as standing trial for wrecking genetically modified crops. Charles Secrett (Cranleigh), executive director of Friends of the Earth, explains the appeal of environmentalism among the upper classes: 'Among the aristocrats there is a sense of noblesse oblige…a feeling of stewardship towards the land.'
Sir Crispin Tickell used his wardenship of Green College, Oxford to provide a base for one rising star of the movement, George Monbiot. Educated at Stowe school and Brasenose College, Oxford, Monbiot was headed for a career at the BBC until he threw in his lot with the Donga tribe at Twyford Down, and, despite some suspicions about this 'careerist' and 'media tart', he succeeded in making himself an accepted spokesman.
It was Zac's father, corporate raider Sir James Goldsmith, who founded the Ecologist magazine, edited by his brother Edward in 1970; and the organisation Friends of the Earth was founded in the same year. Three years later the Ecology Party - later the Green Party - was formed. These groups had supported the Tory government's 'Save It' campaign, popularising austerity measures in 1974, but in the late 1970s they clashed with the establishment over the public inquiry into the Windscale nuclear plant. Conservation had made the transition from 'a fairly close and "gentlemanly" dialogue with the state' to a counter-cultural lifestyle 'comprising vegetarian diets, concern for animals, wholefood shops, open-air festivals, cycling, hiking and rallies'.
But it was only with the decline of the Labour left, following the party's 1983 election defeat, that environmentalism became widely accepted as an alternative to the status quo in the UK. The traditional left's nadir, 1989, coincides with the apex of environmental concerns, when eight per cent of Europeans voted for green parties.
The old left by no means welcomed the environmentalists' claim on radicalism. Tony Benn recorded his impressions of a Friends of the Earth Christmas party in 1980: 'One felt that all this concern was the middle class expressing its dislike of the horrors of industrialisation - keeping Hampstead free from the whiff of diesel smoke, sort of thing'.
But already the old left was reaching out for a 'red-green alliance' to try to compensate for its declining influence - which wasn't something that held an immediate appeal for environmentalists. As the political agenda became more stridently anti-capitalist, though, the remnants of the old left found a home in the new anti-globalisation movement, doing the donkey-work of leafleting, placard-making and mobilising their supporters. Much of the movement was 'reds, pretending to be greens, pretending to be reds', one Trotskyist ruefully admitted to me.
Contemporary green activists have complex attitudes to the movement against capitalism represented by the old left. The rebranding of the anti-globalisation movement as an anti-capitalist movement means taking on some of the rhetorical force of the socialist slogans. Tony Juniper, executive director of Friends of the Earth, explains the evolution in their thinking:
'For the past 10 years we've been locating ourselves more in the bigger economic debate and less in the "save the whales" type debate. Talking about rainforests led us into talking about Third World debt. Talking about climate change led us to talk about transnational corporations. The more you talk about these things, the more you realise the subject isn't the environment any more, it's the economy and the pressures on countries to do things that undercut any efforts they make to deal with environmental issues.'
But just as the anti-globalisation movement reached its apex, it disintegrated. An anti-capitalist demonstration planned for the weekend after 11 September 2001 was cancelled. The left moved on from anti-globalisation to campaigning against the war in Iraq. Recent anti-debt protests in July 2005 were organised at a discrete distance by UK chancellor Gordon Brown and prime minister Tony Blair, working through their 'youth' frontmen Bono and Bob Geldof. But despite the hype, the Edinburgh protests were a damp squib.
More here
U.S./INDIA RESEARCH CO-OPERATION UNDERWAY
A cactus gene isolated and transplanted into wheat for better heat tolerance to beat the vagaries of climate is just a futuristic scenario. But top agriculture scientists from the US and India could soon be working towards such solutions to mitigate the effect of climate change on agriculture as part of the research collaboration launched by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and US President George W Bush. India has sent its first draft proposal to the US, which includes climate change among others, for the Indo-US Knowledge Initiative on Agricultural Research and Education.
Director General of Indian Council for Agriculture Research Dr Mangala Rai, along with his team, has had four video-conferencing sessions with his American counterpart in the US Department of Agriculture on the research areas that would mutually benefit both India and US. And climate change has emerged as an area of focus for both countries. The US team is likely to visit India in November. With global climate change concerns growing rapidly, the potential detrimental effect on crops has been pinpointed as an area of mutual concern during these interactions.
‘‘We are visualising a basic modelling of predicting climate change and a way of combating it. For example, if we visualise a rise in temperature when wheat is maturing, we could look for genes that have thermal tolerance to prevent crop loss,’’ said Rai. ‘‘This is a long-term futuristic approach to develop cutting-edge technology to mitigate effects of climate change.’’ Apart from development of high temperature tolerant varieties of cereals and models for climatic risk predictions, the objective is also to examine strategies to reduce methane emissions from paddies and livestock.
Source
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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
Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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