A CLIMATE SCEPTIC IN BEIJING

An email from Vincent Gray (vinmary.gray@paradise.net.nz) to Benny Peiser:

From March 2nd to March 15th I was a Visiting Scholar at the Beijing Climate Center. It is situated in the midst of a vast complex comprising the Chinese Meteorological Service in the North West of Beijing, just North of the zoo. The buildings are large, modern and impressive, and it is evident that the whole service commands considerable prestige both locally and internationally..

I and my wife were supplied with a comfortable two-bedroom flat with new furniture and furnishings, which included fridge, phone, TV, microwave and kitchen, An exceedingly inexpensive restaurant and local shops were close.

I was welcomed by the Director General of the Beijing Climate Center, Dr Wenjie Dong, who had evidently been reading my material. I was asked to give three lectures over the fortnight which were received by an appreciative audience of fifty (for the first) to twenty five (for the third). The final banquet was chaired by the Vice-Director of the Beijing Meteorological Administration, Mr Xu Xiaofeng, who subsequently appeared on TV on behalf of World Meteorological Day.

I was introduced to several staff members and two of them gave me their recent reprints, in English, from Acta Meteorologica Sinica.

The most interesting of these serves to indicate how their opinions are evolving.. It was:

ZHOU Zongci, DING Yihui, LUO Yong, and WANG Shaowu, "Recent Studies on Attributions of Climate Change in China" , Acta Meteorologica Sinica 2005, Vol 19, 389-400.

You may be aware that when annual mean surface temperatures for the continental USA are subjected to a comprehensive correction procedure called "Homogeneity Adjustment" the resulting sequence shows only very modest overall warming (less than 1°C) for the period 1900 to 2000. They point out that such a comprehensive adjustment is not possible anywhere else in the world because nobody else has the large number of stations and reliable records for comparison purposes.

We also know (apart from people like Kevin Trenberth) that the published global surface record is biased upwards, as shown by recent statistical studies by McKitrick and Michaels ( Climate Research 2004 26 159-173, for land-based data) and Christy, Parker et al (Geophysical Research Letters 2001 28, 183-186, for sea-surface temperatures)

Now, Zhou et al have carried out a "homogeneity adjustment" on weather station measurements for China from 1900 to 1998.for temperature and precipitation. The corrected temperature showed a fluctuating behaviour with a peak in 1943 and a similar figure in 1998. No evidence of significant "global warming". Please note that this adjusted record has been endorsed by Phil Jones of the UK Hadley Centre.

On top of that, they have identified a large number of natural events which have influenced annual fluctuations. They conclude: "The signals produced by the human activities such as greenhouse gases and "brown clouds" likely play the role for the patterns. But the physical feedbacks and mechanisms still keep ambiguous and vague. More researches should be carried out in future to solve this issue"

It is evident that if comprehensive "homogeneity adjustment" could be carried out for the whole of the global surface record there would be little remaining "global warming" which could be attributed to the influence of greenhouse gas increases.

It might also be noted that the second author of this paper, DING Yihui, was one of the eight Chief Editors of "Climate Change 2001, and he is Co-Chair of Working Group I of the IPCC.






UTTER NITWITS

Unsurprising for the exhibitionists of Greenpeace, though

Two U.S. explorers plan to start a four-month summer expedition to the North Pole next month to gather information on the habitat of an animal they believe could be the first victim of global warming -- the polar bear. Lonnie Dupre and Eric Larsen plan to travel 1,100 miles by foot and canoe over the Arctic Ocean to test the depth and density of the ice in summer in a mission sponsored by Greenpeace, the environmental group said on Thursday. According to some scientific predictions, the Arctic Ocean could become ice-free in the summer within a hundred years. Polar bears cannot survive without sea ice and the U.S. government said in February it would consider whether the bears should be protected under the Endangered Species Act.

Unusually heavy snow and ice last year forced Dupre and Larsen to call off a similar mission, but they now plan to launch Project Thin Ice 2006 -- Saving the Polar Bear on May 1 from Canada, traveling to the North Pole and then back to Greenland.

"Last year I came face to face with a polar bear and while I was scared, I also felt a deep respect for the fact that I was in this bear's territory and that it was global warming that was forcing this magnificent creature toward the brink of extinction," Dupre said in a statement. Polar bears are losing weight as their hunting grounds melt away, making it harder for them to hunt seals, experts say. The polar bear population fell 14 percent to just 950 in the 10 years to 2004, according to Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council.


Source. The vanishing bear myth is of course an old one which I have reported about on a number of occasions previously. See for example here and here







GREENIE EXTREMISTS AS DANGEROUS RELIGIOUS FANATICS

Article by Cathy Young:

It started early in March when Eric Pianka, an ecologist at the University of Texas who was named Texas Distinguished Scientist of 2006, gave a speech at a meeting of the Texas Academy of Sciences, filled with dire warnings about the fate of humanity and the earth. About a month later, Forrest M. Mims III, chairman of the Environmental Science Section of the Texas Academy of Science, posted an article about the event in a Web magazine called The Citizen Scientist. He asserted that Pianka advocated the death of more than 5 billion people from a virus for the cause of saving the planet -- to enthusiastic applause from the audience.

Mims's allegation, picked up by a local Texas newspaper, The Seguin Gazette-Enterprise, caused quite a stir on the Internet and a flood of angry e-mails to the Texas Academy of Sciences and the University of Texas. Meanwhile, William Dembski, a philosophy professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a leading champion of intelligent design, proudly announced that he had alerted the Department of Homeland Security to a possible Pianka plot to infect people with a deadly virus.

Meanwhile, many scientists, academics, and liberal bloggers have rallied to the defense of Pianka, who, they say, was not advocating apocalypse but simply delivering a warning about the disastrous consequences of humanity's profligate ways. They see him as a victim of a smear by creationists (Mims is also an intelligent design proponent) who want to portray mainstream science as evil and by right-wingers who want to portray liberal academics as loony extremists.

But while Pianka's critics may be seriously biased and lacking in credibility, this does not quite get Pianka himself off the hook. No, there is no reason to believe that he advocated actively bringing about an epidemic that would kill billions of people. Rather, he asserts that because of overpopulation, we are on the brink of a major epidemic that will wipe out 80 to 90 percent of humanity. And he seems to regard this as a good thing.

Texas Lutheran University senior and biology major Brenna McConnell, who was present at Pianka's speech, corroborated this on her (now-deleted) blog, where she expressed agreement with Pianka: ''He's a radical thinker, that one! I mean, he's basically advocating for the death of all but 10 percent of the current population! And at the risk of sounding just as radical, I think he's right."

And here is an excerpt from another recent Pianka speech, the transcript of which was made public by the Seguin Gazette-Enterprise: ''I think that right now has got to be just about the most interesting time ever and you get to see it, and, hopefully, a few are gonna live through it. . . . Things are gonna get better after the collapse because we won't be able to decimate the earth so much. And, I actually think the world will be much better when there's only 10 or 20 percent of us left."

It would be tempting to dismiss Pianka as an isolated crank. Unfortunately, an apocalyptic, human-hating mentality is a strain that has long been present in environmentalism. In 1989, David Graber, a research biologist with the National Park Service, wrote in the Los Angeles Times: ''We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the earth. . . . Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along."

Most Americans are environmentalists in the sense that they like clean air, clean water, and the preservation of wilderness areas. But for many, environmentalism has become a secular religion with its own fanatics. Some speak of nature's wrath in transparently religious terms. Vanity Fair essayist James Wolcott has rhapsodized on his website about the destructive power of hurricanes as payback for ''the havoc mankind has wreaked upon nature," concluding, ''The gods are not pleased."

It's quite true that mistrust of science is all too common in American society, and the flames of this hostility are fanned by the religious right. But we should also beware of zealots in scientific garb who can only give ammunition to the enemies of science and reason.






Green/Left dam-phobia costs Queenslanders

But even the costly alternative does not please the unpleasable Greenies

Water authorities have begun planning for a second desalination plant as the long-running drought tightens its grip on southeast Queensland. The proposal, which would complement the Gold Coast's plans for a desalination plant, is being described as a "contingency option" in SEQWater's regional drought strategy. The plans were revealed as the Beattie Government battled Opposition attacks over its failure to construct any new dams to bring relief to the state's parched southeast.

Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg yesterday vowed to begin building the proposed Wyaralong Dam near Beaudesert in his first year in government if he won the next election. The Government is investigating two new dam sites in the southeast corner, but the Premier's office would not comment on the matter last night. Officially, the Government continues to focus on conserving water, relying on tighter restrictions, recycled water pipelines, a water grid, water main repairs and pressure reductions to ensure dams remain above 10 per cent. Water Minister Henry Palaszczuk's spokesman said the desalination issue remained under review. SEQWater said a decision about the second plant was due in June.

The Gold Coast City Council plans to build a desalination plant at Tugun to supply 110 million litres of water a day. The plant is expected to cost about $1 billion to build and operate. The second plant, generating 120 million litres a day, would be one of the largest in Australia. But there is no detail yet on where it could be constructed. The first plant is slated for completion by June 2008; the second by March 2009.

Queensland Conservation Council officer Henry Boer said greater community consultation was needed because the plants had environmental impacts and were costly. "These plants use a lot of electricity and have high greenhouse gas emissions," he said. "They are by far the most expensive supply option and the public will have to pay through their water bills." Redlands Mayor Don Seccombe said he was also opposed to the plants, citing cost and premature timing.

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

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