More on the recent Asian brown cloud study

Yet again Greenie "scientists" go into reverse when it suits them. The science is only "settled" as long as it suits their foreordained conclusions. So why should anyone else believe the science is "settled"? The study and its conclusions are junk but the fact that the study can turn the "settled" science on its head with only a passing comment on that and still get published in a leading Greenie journal is the interesting part. The conclusion is obviously what matters and the science can be bent any way you like to suit that

Himalayan glaciers are melting - but not nearly as fast as the fanciful notion of global warming will have you believe. A new study in the Aug. 2 issue of the British science journal Nature found that the solid particles suspended in the atmosphere (called "aerosols") that make up "brown clouds" may actually contribute to warmer temperatures - precisely the opposite effect heretofore claimed by global warming alarmists. "These findings might seem to contradict the general notion of aerosol particles as cooling agents in the global climate system .," concluded the Nature news article summing up the study.

Based on data collected by unmanned aerial vehicles over the Indian Ocean, researchers from the University of California, San Diego and NASA reported not only that aerosols warmed temperatures, but they also increased atmospheric heating by 50 percent. This warming, they say, may be sufficient to account for the retreat of the Himalayan glaciers.

Putting aside the fact that the Himalayan glaciers have been retreating since 1780 - some 70 years before the onset of the current post-Little Ice Age warming trend and 100 years before the onset of significant global industrialization - full appreciation of the significance of the researchers' finding requires a brief trip down recent-memory lane, one, incidentally, that no media outlet reporting this finding bothered to make.

Global warming alarmism is rooted in the idea that ever-increasing manmade emissions of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, cause global temperatures to warm. This idea, however, doesn't match up very well against real-world observations. During the 20th century, for example, while manmade carbon dioxide emissions steadily increased from about 1940 to 1975, global temperatures cooled.

Global warming alarmists, such as the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), try to counter this observation by claiming that aerosol particles in the atmosphere - like soot and sulfates from fossil fuel combustion, and dust from volcanic eruptions - can mask the warming effect of greenhouse gases and cool the planet by reflecting solar radiation back into space. So then, which is it? Do aerosols cool or warm the planet? Can they do both? The correct answers to these questions are not as important as the fact that they are unanswered and will likely remain so for some time to come.

At the very moment that Congress considers enacting energy-price-raising and economy-killing legislation to regulate greenhouse gases based on the idea that human activity is harming global climate, the new aerosol study underscores (again) how little we understand whether and how human activities actually impact global climate. Consider other recent research that ought to give our arm-chair climatologists in Congress pause.

In May, researchers reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the rate of manmade carbon dioxide emissions was three times greater during 2000 to 2004 than during the 1990s. But while humans may be burning more fossil fuels than ever before, that ever-increasing activity isn't having any sort of discernible or proportionate impact on global temperatures.

In April, researchers from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that forests in northern regions - those north of the line of latitude that runs through southern Cuba - will warm surface temperatures by an estimated 10 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100.

Last October, Swedish researchers reported that cosmic-ray-caused changes in cloud cover over a five-year period can have 85 percent of the temperature effect alleged to have been caused by nearly 200 years of manmade carbon dioxide emissions. They estimated that the temperature effects of cloud cover during the 20th century could be as much as seven times greater than the alleged temperature effect of 200 years worth of additional carbon dioxide and several times greater than that of all additional greenhouse gases combined.

Would it be considered "piling on" to remind Congress that last year's hurricane season predictions - that is, a 95 percent chance of a very active season - turned out to be a total bust? If hurricane experts armed with supercomputers can't predict a regional storm season six months into the future, why would anyone think that they can project global climate trends for the next 100 years? These are just some of the things that climatologists have learned or have been proven wrong about in just the past year.

Given the myriad scientific holes in the manmade global warming hypothesis and allowing for the inevitable future discoveries about climate, it seems quite absurd for Congress to proceed on global warming as if, in Al Gore's words, "There is no longer any serious debate over the basic points that make up the consensus on global warming."

The new aerosol study doesn't show that climate alarmists may be just a little off course - it shows that they may be 180 degrees off. If manmade global climate change is something worth fretting over - and it's not at all clear that it is - the aerosol study opens up the possibility for an entirely new hypothesis for global warming with aerosols as the culprit. Yet up to now, the "consensus" crowd has portrayed aerosols in the opposite light as cooling agents. When so-called "consensus" can be that far off, it would seem that there's plenty of room for serious debate.

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The steamrollers of climate science

The IPCC is agenda-driven, not science-driven

Almost from the beginning, critics have attacked the Bush administration for the way it has dealt with science. In many areas - and emblematically in the case of climate change - well-qualified accusers have complained that the White House and its political appointees across the federal government have interfered with the work of scientists, misrepresented their findings and censored their public statements. Many of these cases are shocking - or at least they were, until people became inured to them. The administration's record on managing the government's own scientific efforts, and on respect for science more broadly, is awful.

So when the White House disagrees with most other governments in the world and expresses doubts about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that view is contemptuously dismissed as one more instance. To be sure, the administration has destroyed its own credibility on scientific integrity and has nobody to blame but itself.

For the rest of us, however, this is a pity - because to put it bluntly the IPCC deserves the administration's disdain. It is a seriously flawed enterprise and unworthy of the slavish respect accorded to it by most governments and the media. In the decisions which have already been made on climate-change mitigation, to say nothing of future decisions, the stakes are enormous. In guiding these momentous judgments, the flawed IPCC process has been granted, in effect, a monopoly of official wisdom. That needs to change and the IPCC itself must be reformed.

For a fully documented indictment, read the article by David Henderson in the current issue of World Economics. Mr Henderson, a distinguished academic economist and former head of economics at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, has been tangling with the IPCC for some time. Five years ago, he and Ian Castles (a former chief of the Australian Bureau of Statistics) first drew attention to a straightforward error in the way emissions scenarios were being calculated. The projections had used long-range cross-country projections of gross domestic product that were based on exchange rates unadjusted for purchasing power. This mistake yielded projections for individual countries that were in some cases patently absurd. Far from acknowledging the point and correcting the projections, the IPCC treated these eminent former civil servants as uncredentialed troublemakers. Its head, Rajendra Pachauri, issued a prickly statement complaining about the spread of disinformation.

As Mr Henderson's new article makes clear, the episode was symptomatic of a wider pattern of error (often, in the case of economics, elementary error) and failure to correct it. How can this be possible? The IPCC prides itself on the extent of its network of scientific contributors and on its rigorous peer review. The problem is, although the contributors and peers are impressively numerous, they are drawn from a narrow professional circle. Expertise in economics and statistics is not to the fore; sympathetic clusters of co-authorship and pre-commitment to the urgency of the climate cause, on the other hand, are.

Add to this a sustained reluctance - and sometimes a refusal - to disclose data and methods that would allow results to be replicated. (Disclosure of that sort is common practice these days in leading scholarly journals). As a result, arresting but subsequently discredited findings - such as the notorious "hockey stick" chart showing the 1990s as the northern hemisphere's hottest decade of the millennium - are left to be challenged by troublesome outsiders.

Underlying it all is a pervasive bias. From the outset the IPCC network was fully invested in the idea that climate change is the most pressing challenge confronting mankind and that urgent action far beyond what is already in prospect will be needed to confront it. In the minds of the panel's leaders and spokesmen, this conviction justifies public pronouncements that often go beyond the analysis which the IPCC's own scientists have presented.

Speaking of the panel's Fourth Assessment Report, Mr Pachauri said: "I hope this will shock people and governments into taking more serious action." The rules under which the IPCC operates tell it to be "neutral with respect to policy" - and the reports themselves strive to comply. But statements such as that, and many more besides, align the institution and its network of scientists with a programme that goes much further than science alone dictates.

The IPCC may be right: climate change may indeed be mankind's biggest and most urgent challenge. It would be wrong to demand certainty before doing more. The scientific consensus, though not quite as strong as usually claimed, is surely strong enough to warrant a carbon tax or equivalent.

But if governments are to get the best advice, they need information and analysis from an open and disinterested source - or else from multiple dissenting sources. With the environmental risks calmly laid out, framing the right policies demands proper political accountability and a much wider range of opinion and expertise than the IPCC currently provides. One incompetent institution, committed to its own agenda, should never have been granted this degree of actual and moral authority over the science, over public presentation of the science and over calls for "more serious action" that go well beyond the science.

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Militant Islamic Group Joins Environmental Campaign in Indonesia

Post lifted from Jennifer Marohasy

Abu Bakar Bashir, the well known spiritual leader of militant Islamic group, Jemaah Islamiya, has now joined forces with Indonesia's largest environmental organisation, WALHI, to protest against US-based mining corporation Newmont.



from http://richardness.org/blog/walhisstrangebedfellows.php

I've previously written about the Buyat Bay saga - where Richard Ness and Newmont were accused of having polluted a fishing village and its fringing coral reef with mine tailings.

You may remember that the story made the front page of The New York Times and that five miners, including Australian Phil Turner, were arrested and thrown into a Jakarta jail in September 2004. Richard's son Eric runs a blog on the saga entitled `Watching My Dad's Trial'.

When the claims of pollution where investigated by The World Health Organisation and CSIRO they were found to be bogus - a hoax. You can read a summary of the saga in my latest piece for the IPA Review entitled Politics and the Environment in Indonesia. There are copies of both reports' at Eric's website.

Richard Ness and Newmont were cleared of all charges in April this year, but the finding has been appealed.

In her journalism master's thesis entitled 'Tall Tailings: Truth and Friction in the Buyat Mining Scandal' Canadian Kendyl Salcito suggested some of the key protagonists in the saga are members of the Islamic organisation known as Hizb ut-Tahrir.

Muhammad Al Khaththah, the leader of the Indonesian chapter of Hizb-ut Tahrir, appears in the above photograph with Abu Bakar Bashir.

It is perhaps not surprising that militant environmental and Islamic organisations are joining forces, they both believe that issues of poverty and corruption are a consequence of capitalism and the exploitation of people and natural resources by large multinational corporations. As a consequence many Islamic and environmental activists want to close down mining in Indonesia - at least the most efficient, high tec, modern systems of mining. Interestingly they are supported by activists from countries like Australia and Canada - countries that continue to enjoy a high standard of living as a consequence, at least in part, of capitalism and mining.





Chemist says Global warming is nature's doing

In the 1970s, some climatologists warned the world about global cooling. Now it's global warming. Then it was particulates in the air blocking the sun; now it's carbon dioxide forming a greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is now presented as the most dangerous greenhouse gas in the Earth's atmosphere, the primary cause of global warming. Some even call it a pollutant. With my education in physics and chemistry, I'd like to shed some light on this issue.

CO2 makes a very small contribution to the Earth's temperature. It is only 0.039 percent of the atmosphere. Nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor and argon comprise more than 99 percent of the atmosphere. Furthermore, carbon dioxide is not a particularly effective greenhouse gas. Out of the wide spectrum of radiation received from the sun, CO2 only absorbs energy from three very narrow levels.

Many people believe there is a difference between man-made CO2 and natural CO2. There is no difference. Carbon dioxide is comprised of one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms. CO2 is a natural, vital part of biological life. Ants, termites and decaying foliage account for the formation of most of the CO2. There are more than a quadrillion ants and termites. These also make a major contribution to other greenhouse gases, methane and ammonia.

CO2 is removed from the atmosphere by plant life. (The vast amount of CO2 is removed by algae in the oceans, not by land plants.) Chemists call it equilibrium. When large amounts of CO2 are created by volcanoes or forest fires, the metabolism of plant life increases and in a short time removes the CO2 from the air.

If there is less CO2 in the atmosphere, the metabolism of plant life slows down. Thus, the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere stay very close to a yearly average of 0.039 percent. Because of the dynamic nature of our atmosphere, CO2 levels are always rising or falling. Low levels follow high levels. Ice core sampling demonstrates that this equilibrium has been in place for millennia.

The gas most responsible for the Earth's temperature is water vapor, by far the most important greenhouse gas. Not only does water vapor account for 3 percent to 4 percent of the atmosphere, it also accepts energy from the sun in virtually all energy levels. Water vapor is thousands of times more responsible for temperature than CO2. Ask any climatologist; he will tell you that this is in fact the case.

The oceans control the level of water vapor in the atmosphere. Water vapor is also responsible for cooling the planet, forming the cloud layer and reflecting the sun's energy. Again, an equilibrium. True, the atmosphere may warm for a while, but this causes more water to leave the oceans and fill the atmosphere. Over time, this causes a denser cloud cover, cooling the Earth.

A common practice among climatologists is to treat the Earth as a closed system. But certain gasses do in fact leave our atmosphere. All gases of a molecular weight 18 or above tend to be held by the Earth's gravitational field. Water is molecular weight (mw)18 and CO2 is mw44. They stay on the Earth. Methane and ammonia, the predominant gases of animal life on the planet, leave the gravitational field and go off into space and out of our atmosphere because their molecular weights are 16 and 17, respectively. Presenting these as greenhouse gases does not give a complete picture of their presence in our atmosphere.

So the oceans control both the warming and the cooling of the earth. Man's contribution of these gases is almost not measurable compared to what nature produces. Humans, with all our cars and factories, account for less than 1 percent of the CO2 present at any one time. Furthermore, man does not control the water cycle. We simply are not that important. We can work to keep the Earth clean, but we cannot control the atmosphere. Many climatologists are aware of this but do not give this critical information to the public.

Global-warming activists believe mankind is altering the Earth's temperature. Although many know that man's contribution is negligible, it is not to their political advantage to reveal this fact. Climate scientists receive funding from the government to research causes of and solutions to man-made global warming. If the current warming were demonstrated to be the natural cycle, this funding would be cut.

The 1970s climatologists had incomplete data, believing we were plunging into an ice age. Predictions made now are equally apocalyptic. They again are based on climate models with incomplete data or, in some cases, deliberately withheld data.

We are now making costly political decisions based on the "fact" that human activity is causing the temperature to rise. Many politicians believe that human-caused global warming is real and that since this view is held by a "consensus of scientists," further study is unnecessary. Climatologists need to come forward without fear and give the public the truth. Carbon dioxide's contribution to global warming is minimal; water vapor is the great buffer for the Earth's temperature; the oceans control this process. Human beings have no measurable control over global temperatures.

Source

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The Lockwood paper was designed to rebut Durkin's "Great Global Warming Swindle" film but it is in fact an absolute gift to climate atheists. What the paper says was of course all well-known already but the concession from a Greenie source that fluctuations in the output of the sun have driven climate change for all but the last 20 years really is invaluable. And the one fact that the paper documents so well -- that solar output is on the downturn -- is also hilarious, given its source. Surely even a crazed Greenie mind must see that the sun's influence has not stopped and that reduced solar output will soon start COOLING the earth! Unprecedented July 2007 cold weather throughout the Southern hemisphere might even be the first sign that the cooling is happening. And the fact that warming plateaued in 1998 is also a good sign that we are moving into a cooling phase. As is so often the case, the Greenies have got the danger exactly backwards.

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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