Post lifted from Rossputin
According to an article in the UK’s Telegraph newspaper, [See below] the upcoming report from the IPCC (UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) will reduce its estimate of the human effect on climate change by 25% and cut in half their estimate of the maximum rise in sea levels which climate change could cause.
The changes are in part due to a re-thinking of the way the climate is working, i.e. the effect of aerosol sprays in keeping temperatures from rising, as well as using newer and better data since the last report was completed five years ago.
It would be amusing, were it not so dangerous for policy considerations, that articles like that linked above have headlines pointing toward at least a slight retreat in global warming alarmism but then fill the article itself with the most scare-mongering fact-free text one could imagine outside the National Enquirer. (I take that back…it’s an insult to the National Enquirer.)
Some quote snippets from the Telegraph article:
“People are very worried…”
“…paints a bleak picture…”
“…expect more storms of similar ferocity…”
“…we are storing up problems for ourselves in the future.”
It’s enough to make you put your head in the oven.
But at least we have one politican who has the sense and courage to stand up against so much hype based on junk science, and that is the often-derided Senator James Inhofe (R-OK). Inhofe’s reaction to the story [also see below] is summarized nicely by this quote (by him): “”We are all skeptics now. It appears that the UN is now acknowledging what an increasing number of scientists who study the climate have come to realize: Predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming are simply unsustainable.”
There is an ongoing battle for the “hearts and minds” of people in all industrialized countries, in which liberal anti-capitalists or else well-intentioned but poorly informed environmentalists suggest policy choices which would be devastating to the world’s economy and which would have benefits that are limited at best. However, their side is winning the rhetorical war, in large part due to Tony Blair and the so-called Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger. When you hear people like them say “the debate is over”, don’t believe it for a minute, but hold on to your wallet because your taxes and cost of living are likely to increase when their fears translate into new laws.
UN DOWNGRADES MAN'S IMPACT ON THE CLIMATE
From "The Telegraph", London:
Mankind has had less effect on global warming than previously supposed, a United Nations report on climate change will claim next year. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says there can be little doubt that humans are responsible for warming the planet, but the organisation has reduced its overall estimate of this effect by 25 per cent. In a final draft of its fourth assessment report, to be published in February, the panel reports that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has accelerated in the past five years. It also predicts that temperatures will rise by up to 4.5 C during the next 100 years, bringing more frequent heat waves and storms. The panel, however, has lowered predictions of how much sea levels will rise in comparison with its last report in 2001.
Climate change sceptics are expected to seize on the revised figures as evidence that action to combat global warming is less urgent. Scientists insist that the lower estimates for sea levels and the human impact on global warming are simply a refinement due to better data on how climate works rather than a reduction in the risk posed by global warming. One leading UK climate scientist, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity surrounding the report before it is published, said: "The bottom line is that the climate is still warming while our greenhouse gas emissions have accelerated, so we are storing up problems for ourselves in the future."
The IPCC report, seen by The Sunday Telegraph, has been handed to the Government for review before publication. It warns that carbon dioxide emissions have risen during the past five years by three per cent, well above the 0.4 per cent a year average of the previous two decades. The authors also state that the climate is almost certain to warm by at least 1.5 C during the next 100 years.
Such a rise would be enough to take average summer temperatures in Britain to those seen during the 2003 heatwave, when August temperatures reached a record-breaking 38 C. Unseasonable warmth this year has left many Alpine resorts without snow by the time the ski season started. Britain can expect more storms of similar ferocity to those that wreaked havoc across the country last week, even bringing a tornado to north-west London.
The IPCC has been forced to halve its predictions for sea-level rise by 2100, one of the key threats from climate change. It says improved data have reduced the upper estimate from 34 in to 17 in. It also says that the overall human effect on global warming since the industrial revolution is less than had been thought, due to the unexpected levels of cooling caused by aerosol sprays, which reflect heat from the sun. Large amounts of heat have been absorbed by the oceans, masking the warming effect.
Prof Rick Battarbee, the director of the Environmental Change Research Centre at University College London, warned these masking effects had helped to delay global warming but would lead to larger changes in the future. He said: "The oceans have been acting like giant storage heaters by trapping heat and carbon dioxide. They might be bit of a time-bomb as they have been masking the real effects of the carbon dioxide we have been releasing into the atmosphere. "People are very worried about what will happen in 2030 to 2050, as we think that at that point the oceans will no longer be able to absorb the carbon dioxide being emitted. It will be a tipping point and that is why it is now critical to act to counter any acceleration that will occur when this happens."
The report paints a bleak picture for future generations unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced. It predicts that the climate will warm by 0.2 C a decade for the next two decades if emissions continue at current levels. The report states that snow cover in mountainous regions will contract and permafrost in polar regions will decline.
However, Julian Morris, executive director of the International Policy Network, urged governments to be cautious. "There needs to be better data before billions of pounds are spent on policy measures that may have little impact," he said.
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INHOFE SAYS NEW UN GLOBAL WARMING REPORT PROVES FEARS OF MANMADE CATASTROPHIC CLIMATE CHANGE ARE `UNSUSTAINABLE'
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Chairman of the Environment & Public Works Committee, commented on today's article in the UK Telegraph titled "UN Downgrades Man's Impact on the Climate." The Telegraph reported that a draft of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) upcoming fourth assessment has lowered mankind's estimated impact on the Earth's climate by 25 percent and scaled back sea level rise upper estimates by nearly half since the last IPCC report in 2001. "We are all skeptics now. It appears that the UN is now acknowledging what an increasing number of scientists who study the climate have come to realize: Predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming are simply unsustainable," Senator Inhofe said.
The upcoming UN IPCC assessment is reported to `halve its predictions for sea-level rise by 2100,' according to the Telegraph article. The UN's lowering of mankind's impact on the climate is reportedly because of "a refinement due to better data on how climate works." "It is remarkable that sea level rise upper estimates have been cut nearly in half since the last IPCC assessment in 2001, because of scientific `refinement due to better data.' Climate science is always going through these `refinements.' The erroneous prediction of a coming ice age in the 1970's also faded away due to `a refinement due to better data,'" Senator Inhofe said. "As I detailed in my Senate floor speech on September 25, the media has alternated between four separate global cooling and warming scares since 1895. Each climate scare eventually faded away due to similar `refinements due to better data.'
"Even the UN appears to now be sobering up and dousing much needed cold water on the global warming alarmism promoted by much of the mainstream media, Hollywood, NASA scientist James Hansen and former Vice President Al Gore. News that global warming alarmism is more hype than fact should not surprise those who viewed my committee's "Climate Change and the Media" hearing last week or read the EPW's new publicly released `Skeptics Guide to Debunking Global Warming Alarmism,'" Senator Inhofe added. (For more info on `Skeptic's Guide' go here) "As Chairman of the Environment & Public Works Committee, I have given over 10 climate change speeches and held four full committee hearings since 2003, examining the global warming issue. After more than 20 years of climate hype, the UN's appears to finally be conceding that previous estimates of climatic doom have been over hyped and the science was simply not there to project these frightening `extreme scenarios,' Senator Inhofe added. "Eventually, even the pedlars of climate alarmism will have to concede that the hoopla over manmade catastrophic global warming and the proposed solutions like the costly and ineffective Kyoto Protocol, will prove to be one of the history's most misguided concerns-- joining the 1970's coming ice age fears, overpopulation and famines scares -- to name just a few.
This news from the UN will not be greeted warmly by advocates of climatic doom. One can almost imagine the grieving faces of the Hollywood celebrities and environmentalists as they hear the new UN climate assessment and realize that they are way outside the `consensus' on manmade global warming. With the continued scientific demise of manmade catastrophic global warming fears, the environmentalists and publicity and grant seeking scientists and many in the media, may now have to find another dubious environmental doomsday cause to scare the public and policy makers," Senator Inhofe concluded. Growing skepticism in 2006 that human C02 emissions are creating a "climate catastrophe" caps a year in which numerous scientific studies have bolstered the claims of climate skeptics and are shattering the media-promoted scientific "consensus" on climate alarmism. See here.
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Pesky rainforests defy the global warmers
Banfai and Bowman (2006) report that "a number of processes are thought to be threatening the ecological integrity of monsoon rainforests in Northern Australia," including "the combined effects of an increase in late dry season fires, feral animal damage and weed invasion." In addition, climate alarmists everywhere contend that rainforests the world over are in danger of succumbing to the supposedly deleterious effects of the continuation of what they call the unprecedented global warming of the late 20th century, which they claim was driven by concomitant unprecedented increases in the air's CO2 content, which together comprise the "twin evils" of what we call the radical environmentalist movement.
Against this backdrop of despair, the two Australian researchers from Charles Darwin University's School for Environmental Research decided to test this retracting rainforest claim with a comprehensive repeat aerial photography study of the Northern Territory's Kakadu National Park, where monsoon rainforest exists as an archipelago of hundreds of small patches scattered within a larger eucalypt savanna matrix. In this undertaking, in the words of the two scientists, "changes to the boundaries of 50 monsoon rainforest patches were assessed using temporal sequences of digitized aerial photography [taken in 1964, 1984, 1991 and 2004], with a view to understanding the relative importance of the drivers of change."
So what did they find? Banfai and Bowman report that "rainforest patches increased in size between 1964 and 2004 by an average of 28.8%," and after lengthy analyses of several phenomena that might possibly have been responsible for the range increases, they concluded that "the expansion is likely to have been primarily driven by increases in variables such as rainfall and atmospheric CO2." In this regard, for example, they note that "the average [area] change for dry rainforests from 1964 to 2004 was an increase of 42.1%, whereas for wet rainforests [the increase] was one-third of this at 13.1%." In addition, in the case of dry rainforests, they report there was "an almost linear increase in rainforest area over the study period," in harmony with the concomitant upward trends of both atmospheric CO2 and rainfall.
In further support of the validity of their findings, and "contrary to the view that monsoon rainforests are contracting," which is one of the chief pessimistic mantras of the world's climate alarmists, the two researchers inform us that other repeat aerial photography studies conducted in Northern Australia have also revealed rainforest "expansion at the expense of more open vegetation." These studies include those of monsoon rainforests in Litchfield National Park near Darwin (Bowman et al., 2001) - where forest patches nearly doubled in size between 1941 and 1994 - and in the Gulf of Carpentaria (Bowman et al., in press). In addition, they write that "these changes parallel the observed expansion of tropical rainforest on the east coast of Australia (Harrington and Sanderson, 1994; Russell-Smith et al., 2004)."
Added to these Australian findings, we note that in a recent review of the scientific literature Lewis (2006) reports that most other tropical forests around the world also experienced significant increases in productivity over the last several decades; and he too concludes that the ongoing rise in the air's CO2 concentration is likely the key factor responsible for their increased robustness. Hence, it would appear that wherever one looks around this amazing planet of ours, the greening of the earth continues, which is our optimistic mantra.
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The British Green/Left want transport to be a privilege for the rich only
That from the alleged friends of the worker! I suspect that the Green/Left folks concerned have the spare cash to be among the privileged. No buses for them!
Here is the news for the weekend of 2 and 3 December: In London, `Red' Ken Livingstone, the mayor, held his first West End VIP Day - VIP standing for `Very Important Pedestrians'. The mayor banned cars, buses and taxis from Oxford Street and Regent Street between 10.30am and 5pm on Saturday, so that shoppers could shop without having to `dodge vehicles'. A report commissioned by the British government floated various ideas for relieving gridlock and congestion on British roads - no, not by building more roads, but by introducing a national road-pricing scheme where motorists will be charged for driving on motorways and A-roads. And finally, EU bigwigs in Brussels finalised plans to enforce `carbon quotas' on airlines, which could see the price of flights go up by 40 Euros as passengers are charged for the impact their journeys have on the climate.
Welcome to the stay-at-home society. It seems the only `innovation' in transport these days is to find new ways to punish us for using it: motorists will effectively be fined for driving their cars, and the cost of cheap flights - which allow people of all income levels (and even none) to jet around Europe - could be more than doubled. Modern forms of travel, which any progressive society should take for granted, are now seen as luxuries that we can ill-afford; selfish indulgences enjoyed by those hardnosed and uncaring sections of society. A new anti-movement movement wants to put the brakes on cars and planes and propel us back to a medieval state of affairs, where we only leave our local patch if we really, really must, and have to pay a big fat toll to a big fat sheriff for the privilege of doing so. Honk if you think this is out of order.
Today's narrow vision for transport and travel is clear in the Eddington Transport Study published last week by the UK Department for Transport (which really ought to be renamed the Department against Transport). Written by Sir Rod Eddington, former chief executive of British Airways, the study argues that Britain's road system is clogged up with cars. But instead of reaching the logical conclusion that more roads are required to accommodate these cars, it suggests making driving by car more expensive and thus less attractive. In short: ease congestion on the roads by forcing people off the roads.
After the launch of the study, the secretary of state for transport Douglas Alexander `ruled out more road-building as a solution', arguing that: `Most informed commentators realise we can't simply build our way out of the challenge of congestion.' This has become a mantra in government circles, always asserted but never explained. The Department for Transport's big 2004 report The Future of Transport declared no fewer than three times that `We cannot build our way out of the problems we face'; a similar sentiment is expressed in the Eddington Study. In fact, building more roads looks like a simple and obvious solution to the apparently terrible problem of congestion. Indeed, it would appear to be successive governments' reluctance to build more roads that caused today's congestion problems. In 2004, British motorists travelled a total of 306 billion miles, more than three times the number of miles travelled 40 years earlier in 1964 (95 billion miles); and there were around four times as many licensed private cars in 2004 as there were in 1964: 26 million compared with seven million back then. And yet over this 40-year period, as car ownership quadrupled and car journeys trebled, total road length in Britain increased by approximately 20 per cent, from 200,000 miles in 1964 to 245,000 miles in 2004.
I don't know if I'm one of those `informed commentators' referred to by Douglas Alexander (who apparently all recognise that we cannot build our way out of congestion), but I do know that if you don't build enough roads to accommodate the rising number of cars, then there will be traffic jams. It's simple maths, innit? And yet one of the reasons the Eddington Study proposes national road tolls is as a means of putting off, forever, the need to build more and better roads. It argues: `A national scheme [of road pricing] is estimated to reduce the case for inter-urban road build beyond 2015 by some 80 per cent.. Pricing also has the potential to have positive air quality benefits by providing for freer-flowing traffic [while] reducing the need for new infrastructure build.' For all the talk of road tolls as a short-term solution to the problem of congestion - as has been suggested by various commentators who support the road-pricing measures - in fact they are intended to be a long-term solution to the government's unwillingness to invest in `new infrastructure build'.
Indeed, the Eddington Study proposes shutting down the debate, for once and for all, about whether Britain needs more targeted solutions such as road-pricing or a grander vision of a new and improved road network. It says that, `[T]he UK needs to decide between: a very significant road build programme, or widespread pricing with much more moderate road build'. It then concludes, unsurprisingly, that `congestion-targeted road pricing is the most cost-effective and flexible way to deliver the benefits of reducing unreliability and to tackle congestion'. And finally it recommends (seriously, in Recommendation 3.3) to: `Stop the debate on whether to do this, and move on to debating how to do it.' So screw all of those who think Britain needs a `very significant road build programme': that debate is over, and now we must focus on the finer points of how to charge drivers a tenner every time they venture more than a few miles from their front doors.
Meanwhile, London mayor Ken Livingstone is doing his bit to keep car drivers in their place, announcing that he plans to extend his congestion charge outside of central London and charge bigger cars in Tax Band G 25 pounds a day for the luxury of driving in the capital. That could cost some motorists 6,000 a year. Yet the idea that congestion in London is caused by too many cars - by school-run mums, wideboy businessmen in BMWs, and the rest - doesn't stand up to scrutiny. In fact, again the problem seems to be too little road space. Writing on spiked when the congestion charge was introduced in 2003, Edmund King of the RAC Foundation pointed out there are fewer roads in London than in the past, due to a widening of pavement space, increased pedestrianisation, more bus lanes, and so on; he also pointed out that in 2001 there were 35,000 fewer cars entering London in the morning than there were in 1991, and `traffic levels have fallen by 18 per cent [between 2001 and 2003]'. As with the road pricing scheme, Livingstone's congestion charge punishes individual motorists for what are officialdom's own failures: its failure to build more and decent roads both in and around London.
If you're thinking of jetting off to sunnier or more relaxed climes to escape all this anti-movement miserabilism, think again - or at least be prepared to pay more than usual. Stavros Dimas, the EU environment commissioner, is expected to announce new laws this week which will enforce annual emissions limits on airlines. It is presented as a clampdown on Big Airlines that carelessly damage the environment, but in fact, as The Times points out, it is `cheap flights that are under threat' - the costs are likely to be borne by passengers. This new measure seems to be motivated by a killjoy-ish suspicion of what is deemed `unnecessary travel'. A recent study by The Economist found that aviation's contribution `to total man-made emissions worldwide is around three per cent' - way below the contributions of industry, electricity generation, and other modes of transport. What the dull Dimas and other joyless suits in Brussels really dislike about air travel (especially the cheap variety) is that it seems frivolous and fun, and we can't have any of that.
So it is okay for Dimas and the rest to transport the whole European Parliament from Brussels to Strasbourg once every month - which involves transporting 732 MEPs, 2,000 parliamentary staff and hundreds of other EU officials hundreds of miles by coach, train and plane at a cost of 209 million Euros each time - but it is not okay for the rest of to take a cheap jaunt to Spain once a year. Double standards, or what?
One of the greatest advances of the past 200 years has been man's ability to travel beyond his garden gate - to move to cities, visit different continents, meet various peoples, and broaden his horizons. The horse and cart was replaced by the car, and the long-haul ship by the aeroplane, as we began to view the world outside our windows as something to be explored and enjoyed rather than as something strange and dangerous. Yet today, six years into the twenty-first century, our rulers look down their noses at free and easy travel and do all they can to clamp down on it. Maybe they want us to stay in our local towns, like our peasant forebears did, and only travel beyond what we know when it is strictly necessary to do so.
They should bear in mind the words of aviation innovator Wilbur Wright: `The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors, who in their gruelling travels in prehistoric times looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space.' Sir Rod, Ken and Stavros Dimas can partake in prehistoric `gruelling travels' if they like; most of the rest of us would rather soar freely like birds in aeroplanes, or like cheetahs in our cars.
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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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Jim Hansen and his twin
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