NEWS: THE IPCC CLIMATE PROJECTIONS ARE NOT PREDICTIONS

Mark Bahner [mark.bahner@verizon.net] writes:

On Nature's "Climate Feedback" blog, Kevin Trenberth [of the National Center for Atmospheric Research] posted a comment that emphatically (and correctly) pointed out that the IPCC has never made any predictions about climate change. Eduardo Zorita then asked, "The troubling aspect of Trenberth's comment is that if the IPCC climate simulations do not represent real predictions for the future, how can the theory be falsified?"

The answer of course is that the IPCC "projections" can't be falsified, because they aren't predictions. I then offered to debate anyone anywhere on the proposition: Resolved: "The IPCC Third Assessment Report's (TAR's) projections for methane atmospheric concentrations, carbon dioxide emissions and atmospheric concentrations, and resultant temperature increases constitute the greatest fraud in the history of environmental science." So far, no takers.




SIACHEN GLACIER, HIMALAYAS

(Paper from Journal of the Geological Society of India, Vol.70(1), July 2007, pp.11-16)

By V.K. Raina and C. Sangewar

Abstract

"The Siachen glacier is the second largest glacier known outside the polar and sub-polar regions and the largest in the Karakoram Himalaya. The glacier with a length of 74 km is an example of the nature and size of the glaciers that must have once existed in the Himalaya towards the end of the last Ice Age. This glacier, primarily, because of its size has remained an important topic of glacier study and survey. Observation of the glacier front from 1862AD till date has revealed that there may have been a rapid advance of 700 m or so between 1862 and 1909, which was subsequently neutralised by relatively faster retreat between 1929AD and 1958AD. The glacier along its snout front has since been in rest mode, a term used in glaciology to depict glaciers with very low or practically nil retreat." Contrary to the general presumption that glaciers all over the world are rapidly retreating, the authors report that the Siachen glacier, Karakoram mountains, Ladahk is in a rest mode, with practically no observable retreat.




FUN: UK SMOKING BAN CAUSES GLOBAL WARMING

Concerns are mounting that the smoking ban which came into effect across the whole of the UK this weekend could lead to an increase in carbon emissions as pubs, restaurants and workplaces invest in gas-fired patio heaters to keep warm smokers forced outside by the ban. Recent research from British Gas predicted that increased sales of gas-fired patio burners to pubs as a result of the smoking ban would see carbon emissions from the pub heaters alone rocket to 160,000 tonnes of CO2 a year, representing almost ten percent of the annual reduction the UK needs to meet its Kyoto commitments by 2012.

The report also surveyed 250 pubs in Scotland, where the ban has been in place for a year, and found half had deployed the heaters to help smokers keep warm outside. The research follows separate predictions from the Green Party which warned the CO2 emissions of London alone could increase by over 20,000 tonnes a year as a consequence of the ban.

FULL STORY here





FAT PEOPLE ARE KILLING THE POLAR BEARS!

Excerpts from and comments on an article in New Scientist by Ian Roberts

"We tend to think of obesity only as a public-health problem, but many of its causes overlap with those of global warming. Car dependence and labour-saving devices have cut the energy people expend as they go about their lives, at the same time increasing the amount of fossil fuel they burn. It's no coincidence that obesity is most prevalent in the US, where per capita carbon emissions exceed those of any other major nation, and it is becoming clear that obese people are having a direct impact on the climate".

Roberts speciously reasons that obese people, who (allegedly) consume 40% more calories than non obese people, (allegedly) use their cars more because they are too fat to move properly, and (allegedly) "eat the kind of things which are more CO2 intensive, contribute disproportionately to global warming than their thin counterparts." Roberts's argument is not scientific, but a narrow, shallow, and hollow critique of capitalist society:

"The social stigma attached to obesity is one of the few forces slowing the epidemic - even though obesity is not a personal failing but a problem of society. We live in an environment that serves primarily the financial interests of the corporations that sell food, cars, and petroleum."

This serving of 'financial interest' traps people in vicious cycles of low-self esteem and comfort eating, diminished mobility/health and car use - all to the detriment of the environment. "And as the number of obese people increases, a kind of positive feedback kicks in. Obese people in the US are already throwing their political weight around."

Roberts then asks us to panic about the possibility of the political voice of fat Americans being used to demand, elevators, escalators, and other forms of labour-saving mechanisation, which in turn worsens the cycle of increasing fuel use, carbon emissions, and the world's waistlines.

When all that the best clinical minds can offer is the political idea that people's desire for food and labour-saving devices (ie, higher standards of living) are expressions of a kind of false consciousness, small wonder that people complain about 'health fascism'.

Roberts has such contempt for the public that he assumes to know their political and material interests better than they do, and pretends that it is 'capitalism wot makes 'em do it'... that people are too fat headed to know what to eat.

It must be lean times at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, because this poverty-stricken argument is so bloated, it needs four bandwagons to wheel it onto the pages of the New Scientist: obesity, global warming, anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism. All that's missing is a photo of a polar bear perched on a dwindling ice floe.

Source






Tree revolt

Australian farmers are chopping down thousands of trees every day in a dramatic protest against laws intended to curb the country's fast-rising greenhouse gas emissions. Fed up with government restrictions on the use of their land, farmers began a civil disobedience campaign by cutting down one tree on each property, with a threat to increase the rate of felling each day until the dispute is resolved. By the end of this week more than 128,000 trees could be lost in a single day.

The farmers claim that the nation's vegetation management laws, under which the clearing of trees has been made an offence, are leaving farmers bankrupt or rendering their farms marginal because trees are taking over open grasslands. But the Government says that the strict land-clearing laws are necessary to preserve forests to soak up carbon dioxide. Without legislation, the Government claims, vast areas would be cleared to increase acreage of arable land.

Australia has the highest per-capita greenhouse gas emissions and has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, claiming that the climate change pact favours Europe and puts other countries at a disadvantage.

Alistair McRoberts, a farmer in Cobar, New South Wales, who has joined the protest, said: "How would you feel if the Government regulated to turn the third and fourth bedrooms . . . into accommodation for homeless people, and they didn't pay you any compensation for doing so? "You still pay the mortgage, you still pay the rent, but that's just bad luck. We are being hoodwinked to the highest order by the Government and we need to talk about it."

Brad Bellinger, the chairman of the Australian Beef Association, said that he supported the campaign. On Monday he cut down two trees at his property in New South Wales. He said that, as the fell rate increased, farmers would turn to mechanisation to keep the protest up. "It's a matter of complete desperation," Mr Bellinger said. "By Day 10 we will need bulldozers." Steve Trueman, a Queensland agricultural marketer, who has helped to form a loose coalition of farming groups to take part in the protest, said that desperate farmers who had campaigned for five years to have the land-clearing laws changed were behind the tree-felling campaign. "We are losing tens of thousands of hectares of formerly productive land [because of] these laws," he said.

He added that one large western Queensland property of 56,000 hectares (138,000 acres) was now overrun by hop bush, a tree-like weed that is protected by law. The property once supported up to 15,000 merino sheep but now has only six head of cattle.

Illegal land clearing has been an acute problem in the large states of New South Wales and Queensland. A WWF study in New South Wales estimated that in the seven years to 2005, 80 million reptiles and 13 million birds had been wiped out because of loss of habitat. About 340,000 hectares of land were cleared in Australia in 2005.

Mr Trueman said that farmers would end their tree-felling only when the environment ministers of each state agreed to meet them and discuss the issues behind the protests. "Farmers don't want to be taking this action," he said. "Farmers need trees on their properties as wind breaks and for soil conservation." He said that if land-clearing laws were not relaxed, there would be consequences for urban dwellers in Australia. "If we don't get better outcomes for farmers Australia will face food shortages in future. It won't be because of climate change. It will be because of land-clearing laws."

John Howard, the Prime Minister, has called for a "New Kyoto" that will not harm the country's oil, coal and gas exports and bring in developing nations, such as India and China. Australia was part of the original negotiations that set targets for developed nations, but the Government later decided not to ratify the pact. New figures yesterday showed that the country was almost certain to exceed its greenhouse emissions target of 108 per cent of 1990 levels by 2012 set under Kyoto. The latest figures show that transport emissions have risen by 4 per cent in the year to May, already pushing national greenhouse gas emissions to 107.9 per cent of 1990 levels.

Source






Nature's coral cull

So it's not global warming after all?

SCIENTISTS have discovered that corals can be wiped out by nothing more sinister than an extremely low tide coinciding with a clear, sunny day. It means Mother Nature herself can prompt coral bleaching and dieback - a natural disaster. In a paper published in the Marine Biology journal, Ken Anthony and Ailsa Kerswell, of James Cook University and the University of Queensland, said severe "sun-dry tides" rarely occurred because they depended on the alignment of many natural extremes. These included a combination of sun, moon and chance weather and could leave coral colonies bleached and devastated.

"Really low tides, where the local sea level gets to its extreme low for the year, can occur at different times of the day," Dr Anthony said. "In years where this occurs during the middle of the day when the sunlight is at its most intense and the reefs are almost fully exposed, there is a real risk of severe coral stress and death in the shallow reef zone." Such an event occurred in September 2005 when Dr Anthony and Dr Kerswell were taking JCU students on a field trip to Orpheus Island, east of Ingham in north Queensland. Their observations led them to investigate mysterious coral deaths on the island - the extent of which had not been recorded on the Great Barrier Reef.

"At first we thought it was a major outbreak of disease," Dr Kerswell said. Having established that it was not disease, the pair looked through records of tidal patterns over the previous eight years and analysed the risk of corals being out of the water and exposed to the sun. They found that in September 2005 the Reef suffered from an extremely low tide during the daytime. Dr Anthony said such an event might have been nature's way of culling corals that were taking over.

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 generally 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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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