YET ANOTHER GREENIE FALSE PROPHET

Nothing has come of his prophecies in the past 20 years so he is ratcheting up the shrillness

The world has already passed the point of no return for climate change, and civilisation as we know it is now unlikely to survive, according to James Lovelock, the scientist and green guru who conceived the idea of Gaia - the Earth which keeps itself fit for life. In a profoundly pessimistic new assessment, published in today's Independent, Professor Lovelock suggests that efforts to counter global warming cannot succeed, and that, in effect, it is already too late. The world and human society face disaster to a worse extent, and on a faster timescale, than almost anybody realises, he believes. He writes: " Before this century is over, billions of us will die, and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable." [Nutty comment. The central Arctic is water. The central Antarctic, by comparison, is a huge continent that has supported a great efflorescence of life in past warmer eras. But I guess he did not want to mention that]

In making such a statement, far gloomier than any yet made by a scientist of comparable international standing, Professor Lovelock accepts he is going out on a limb. But as the man who conceived the first wholly new way of looking at life on Earth since Charles Darwin, he feels his own analysis of what is happening leaves him no choice. He believes that it is the self-regulating mechanism of Gaia itself - increasingly accepted by other scientists worldwide, although they prefer to term it the Earth System - which, perversely, will ensure that the warming cannot be mastered....

Professor Lovelock, who conceived the idea of Gaia in the 1970s while examining the possibility of life on Mars for Nasa in the US, has been warning of the dangers of climate change since major concerns about it first began nearly 20 years ago....

Two years ago he sparked a major controversy with an article in The Independent calling on environmentalists to drop their long-standing opposition to nuclear power, which does not produce the greenhouses gases of conventional power stations. Global warming was proceeding so fast that only a major expansion of nuclear power could bring it under control, he said. Most of the Green movement roundly rejected his call, and does so still.

Now his concerns have reached a peak - and have a new emphasis. Rather than calling for further ways of countering climate change, he is calling on governments in Britain and elsewhere to begin large-scale preparations for surviving what he now sees as inevitable - in his own phrase today, "a hell of a climate", likely to be in Europe up to 8C hotter than it is today. In his book's concluding chapter, he writes: "What should a sensible European government be doing now? I think we have little option but to prepare for the worst, and assume that we have passed the threshold."...

He goes on: "We have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act, and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilisation for as long as they can." He believes that the world's governments should plan to secure energy and food supplies in the global hothouse [Since huge expanses of Canada and Siberia would become breadbaskets with significant global warming, it is totally illogical to see food as a future problem. The man has obviously lost his marbles], and defences against the expected rise in sea levels. The scientist's vision of what human society may ultimately be reduced to through climate change is " a broken rabble led by brutal warlords."

Professor Lovelock draws attention to one aspect of the warming threat in particular, which is that the expected temperature rise is currently being held back artificially by a global aerosol - a layer of dust in the atmosphere right around the planet's northern hemisphere - which is the product of the world's industry. This shields us from some of the sun's radiation in a phenomenon which is known as "global dimming" and is thought to be holding the global temperature down by several degrees. But with a severe industrial downturn [He thinks India and China are going to give up modernization???], the aerosol could fall out of the atmosphere in a very short time, and the global temperature could take a sudden enormous leap upwards.

More here





Greenpeace co-founder praises global warming

Global warming and nuclear energy are good and the way to save forests is to use more wood. That was the message delivered to a biotechnology industry gathering yesterday in Waikiki. However, it wasn't the message that was unconventional, but the messenger - Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore. Moore said he broke with Greenpeace in the 1980s over the rise of what he called "environmental extremism," or stands by environmental groups against issues such as genetic crop research, genetically modified foods and nuclear energy that aren't supported by science or logic.

Hawai'i, which is one of the top locations nationwide for genetically modified crop research, has become a focal point in the debate about the risks and value of such work. Friction between environmentalists and other concerned groups and the biotech industry surfaced most recently in relation to the use of local crops to grow industrial and pharmaceutical compounds. Last year that opposition halted a Big Island project planning to use algae for trial production of pharmaceutical drugs.

Zero-tolerance standards against such research by environmental groups delay developments that could help those with unmet basic needs, Moore said. Instead Moore called for compromise rather than confrontation on the part of the environmentalists. "There's no getting away from the fact that over 6 billion people wake up each day on this planet with real needs for food, energy and materials," he told those attending a luncheon at a three-day Pacific Rim Summit on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy.

The event was sponsored by the Biotechnology Industry Organization. Sponsors included Dupont, Carghill and the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, which spent $15,000 to support the conference. In direct opposition to common environmentalist positions, Moore contended that global warming and the melting of glaciers is positive because it creates more arable land and the use of forest products drives up demand for wood and spurs the planting of more trees. He added that any realistic plan to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and the emission of so-called greenhouse gases should include increased use of nuclear energy.

Among the 300 or so members in the audience yesterday was Henry Curtis, executive director for environmental group Life of the Land. Curtis said he found Moore's comments "interesting." "He's obviously thought about things," Curtis said. "But I don't buy a lot of his arguments. "I think the movement dealing with (genetically modified organisms) is very wide. You can't just say everybody that's against it is against it for this reason and they're totally against it. "Part of what we're doing in the environmental movement is safeguarding the downsides," Curtis added. "We don't want to see a downside that we don't anticipate overwhelming the system."

Source. (HT Commonsense & Wonder)





TREE SPECIES AS LIVING PROOF OF PAST CLIMATE CHANGE

On 13th., I quoted the following statement:

"Does anyone remember the glaciers that once threatened Florida and caused white spruce trees to grow in Georgia? Archeological evidence proves that sub-Arctic forests grew 18,000 years ago where orange groves and pecan trees now flourish. How about that mini-Ice Age of 1100-1600 A.D.? History books recount the cold weather endured by the Northern Hemisphere during that period. More recently, 20th century weather records detail the paralyzing cold and snow that often visited Western Oregon to freeze the Willamette and Columbia rivers."

An Australian reader has amplified that with the following comment about remnant Antarctic species still growing in elevated areas of sub-tropical Queensland:

"Not to mention the very much still alive Antarctic Beech trees that are still hanging on at the southern end of Lamington National Park in the Gold Coast Hinterland. Last time I was there is was a weird place: almost no birds; possibly because the trees have not flowered for possibly decades, hence no fruit, fewer insects etc."

There is a brief note on Antarctic beech here and there is more on the Antarctic origins of the nothofagus genus here




TRADITIONAL PEER REVIEW IN CRISIS: ANOTHER FAKED STUDY PUBLISHED

And it took someone outside the field -- the Prime Minister's sister! -- to blow the whistle. Reminiscent of McIntyre and McKitrick blowing the whistle on Michael Mann's "hockeystick"

A Norwegian cancer scientist has been exposed as a fake after falsifying a study on oral cancer published in the renowned medical journal The Lancet. Jon Sudboe, 44, invented more than 900 individuals as the basis for his research on the correlation between taking anti-inflammatory drugs, such as paracetamol, and oral cancer. The article, published in October, concluded individuals who took anti-inflammatory drugs were less likely to develop the disease. "He faked everything: names, diagnosis, gender, weight, age, drug use," Stein Vaaler, director of strategy at Oslo's Radium hospital, said. "There is no real data whatsoever, just figures he made up himself. Every patient in this paper is a fake. "He was an outstanding scientist in our hospital. I feel shocked and depressed. We could not believe what happened or why he did it."

The Radium hospital is now investigating all research involving Dr Sudboe. An external commission, led by Anders Ekbom from Stockholm's Karolinska Institute, is to start work later this week. It will also examine 38 articles Dr Sudboe has published since 1997. The articles had turned Dr Sudboe into an internationally esteemed scientist.

Several people who have co-authored research with Dr Sudboe said they were stunned by the revelations. "This is as big a shock for me as for everyone else," colleague Dr Jon Mork told Norwegian newspaper VG. "I don't think any of the other co-writers were aware of this."

The Norwegian daily Dagbladet said Dr Sudboe's wife and twin brother were among scientists who have collaborated with him, and said his brother had co-written the Lancet article. There are no indications anyone else knew of the fraud. Dagbladet said 250 of Dr Sudboe's sample of 908 people had the same birthday.

The scandal came to light when the Norwegian prime minister's sister read the article at Christmas. Camilla Stoltenberg, who works at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, noticed claims that Dr Sudboe had gathered information from a national database. But the database in question had not been open until now.

Dr Sudboe is currently on sick leave. He could not be reached for comment and has not commented so far.

The scandal comes just days after an inquiry in South Korea found stem cell pioneer Hwang Woo-suk had faked almost all his research. On Friday, Dr Hwang asked for forgiveness, but said members of the research team at Mizmedi hospital, Seoul, had lied to him about growing stem cells from human embryos he had cloned.

The Guardian, 16 January 2006

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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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