THE DOG THAT DID NOT BARK

CO2 "pollution" is up but what about the temperature increase it is supposed to cause? See if you can find a mention of temperature in the article below. Also note that ozone destruction is said to have been falling steadily but no mention of whether the supposedly-related Antarctic "hole" has been shrinking. It hasn't of course. If the "cause" does not produce the effect it is supposed to, what does that tell you about the "cause"?

Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and some other greenhouse gases grew at record rates last year, a CSIRO scientist said today. But some of the worst ozone-depleting gases in the atmosphere had showed a drop in the past eight years, Paul Fraser, from CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, said. The results of the testing at the Cape Grim meteorological station in Tasmania will feature at a climate meeting in Sydney tomorrow.

Dr Fraser said carbon dioxide grew by two parts per million (0.54 per cent) in 2005, the fourth year in a row of above-average growth. "To have four years in a row of above-average carbon dioxide growth is unprecedented," Dr Fraser said. "In addition, the trend over recent years suggests the growth rate is accelerating." He said the 30-year record of air collected at the Cape Grim observation station showed growth rates of just over one part per million in the early 1980s but, in recent years, carbon dioxide had increased at almost twice this rate. "This is a clear signal that fossil fuels are having an impact on greenhouse gas concentrations in a way we haven't seen in the past," Dr Fraser said.

Synthetic greenhouse gases, including hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), displayed a strong increasing trend. Dr Fraser said the highest growth rate, a seven parts a 1000 billion or 5.3 per cent increase, was recorded in 2005. Nitrous oxide also showed an increasing growth rate, growing by about one part per billion, or 0.3 per cent, in 2005.

Dr Fraser said there was some good news for the atmosphere. "Concentrations of methane, the second most important gas responsible for the enhanced greenhouse effect, have not grown for six years," he said. "In fact, the past two years have shown slight decreases in methane, the first time we have seen this." While the reason for decrease was not certain, Dr Fraser suggested it might be due to better management of the exploration and use of natural gas, leading to less leakage.

There also was good news for the ozone hole. "Ozone depleting gases have been decreasing since 1997," Dr Fraser says. "The fall in concentrations has continued in 2005, so we have seen a decline in concentration of ozone-depleting gases for nine years now."

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Hooray! Losses lead to Greenpeace job cuts

That a largely nuisance organization survives at all is the pity -- when there are so many real conservation problems (like soil erosion and salinity) that need every attention

Conservation giant Greenpeace Australia Pacific has posted its third operating loss in as many years and culled staff numbers. Greenpeace chief executive Steve Shallhorn admitted yesterday the organisation had been forced to make 12 full-time staff members out of 80 redundant this year in a belt-tightening exercise aimed at balancing the budget. The organisation's financial report for 2005 shows it raised more than $17 million last year from supporters, almost $4million more than in 2004, but recorded a net loss of $907,000. In 2004, Greenpeace Australia was $1.2 million in the red.

According to the audited financial statement, the losses were a result of "additional investment in fundraising", an investment which Greenpeace believes has stemmed the decline in new supporter numbers over recent years. Mr Shallhorn defended the losses, saying they were planned as the organisation drew down and spent cash reserves of almost $4million. "Over three years we had the ability to spend more money on campaigns than we earned because we were drawing down reserves," he said. "This year we're moving to a balanced budget."

He admitted that Greenpeace had also wound down some campaigns and shifted others overseas under a new agreement with Greenpeace International that would see 25per cent of all the Australia Pacific arm's fundraising go offshore. Greenpeace Australia already contributes 18 per cent of its revenues to Greenpeace International each year. From next year, that contribution will rise by an additional 7 per cent in order to fund new Greenpeace offices in countries such as China, India, Thailand, Indonesia and China. "Greenpeace offices have agreed to a phenomenon known as the Global Resource Allocation where the larger offices set aside a proportion of their fundraising to be spent on campaigns in the developing world," Mr Shallhorn said. As a result, more money would be diverted to campaigning against the rapid deforestation of Melanesia, Papua New Guinea and The Amazon as well as unsustainable fishing practices in the Pacific. He said no further redundancies would be required to fund those projects.

"The last year or so has been very good for Greenpeace and we have grown the number of supporters and as 2005 financial statements show, we're raising more money each year," Mr Shallhorn said. "If anything we're finding the current climate relatively easy to get Australians to support our work and attracted an additional 1500 supporters in the last six months." Around one million Euros were spent on Greenpeace's anti-whaling campaign in January this year that saw numerous high-seas confrontations with Japanese whaling boats, but that money came from the Greenpeace International budget, a Greenpeace Australia Pacific spokeswoman said last night.

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CHIEF METEOROLOGIST EXPLAINS HIS SKEPTICISM ABOUT CLIMATE PANIC

Augie Auer is irritated. The former Met Service chief meteorologist is irked by the bad science that has gone into the dire predictions about the effects of man-made global warming on the planet. Professor Auer, of Auckland, past professor of atmospheric science at the University of Wyoming, is part of a group of leading climate scientists who have formed the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, aimed at refuting what it believes are unfounded claims about man-made global warming.

In fact, he says, if we didn't have the greenhouse effect, the planet would be 33deg C colder than it is now. "The average temperature of the planet is about plus 15 deg C, it would be minus 18 deg C if we didn't have the effect of the greenhouse warming."

He said the whole history of global warming dated back to about the 1980s and he partly blames the media and partly scientists for the fears that have been raised. Some journalists were "a bit scientific illiterate" and when scientists put out the results of what their computer modelling effort would suggest, it was usually worst-case scenarios that were reported. "It was usually an envelope of figures, one which said the planet could warm 6 deg in the next 100 years and the other end of the envelope was perhaps half a deg in 100 years.

"And you know which one would be quoted," said Prof Auer. "And the scientists were, I feel, in some respects, to blame because they never came forward and said wait a minute, you took that out of context, you know there's another end to it here."

That in turn started a rather insidious triangle in which maintaining that high danger, that crisis environment, drove the research funding, he said. "Crises are what always drives the funding."

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NO EVIDENCE OF GLOBAL INCREASE IN WATER VAPOUR CONTENT

A new paper by Smith et al, (Abstract below) suggests that there has been no global increase in water vapour content, undermining an important IPCC claim that the warming effect of CO2 is magnified by increased atmospheric water vapour:

Variations in annual global precipitation (1979-2004), based on the Global Precipitation Climatology Project 2.5 analysis

By Thomas M. Smith et al.

Abstract

The Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) has produced a combined satellite and in situ global precipitation estimate, beginning 1979. The annual average GPCP estimates are here analyzed over 1979-2004 to evaluate the large-scale variability over the period. Data inhomogeneities are evaluated and found to not be responsible for the major variations, including systematic changes over the period. Most variations are associated with El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) episodes. There are also tropical trend-like changes over the period, correlated with interdecadal warming of the tropical SSTs and uncorrelated with ENSO. Trends have spatial variations with both positive and negative values, with a global-average near zero.

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 33, L06705, 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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